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Sea water is about 3.5% salt by weight [1]. The city of Los Angeles uses about 14 billion gallons of water in a month [2]. This works out to something like 2 mi
by pranjalv123 10y ago
Sea water is about 3.5% salt by weight [1]. The city of Los Angeles uses about 14 billion gallons of water in a month [2]. This works out to something like 2 million tons of salt being produced just by LA in a single month. So we can turn it into table salt... but it's something like six tons of table salt per year per person.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater
[2]: http://projects.scpr.org/applications/monthly-water-use/los-angeles-department-of-water-and-power/ http://projects.scpr.org/applications/monthly-water-use/los-...
- brianwawok 10y agoWhere does all the waste water go? If 10 billion goes down the sewer and back to the ocean, you can "re-salt" that water on the way out..
- kaybe 10y agoEven better, you can build an osmosis power station and create a lot of electricity. The energy in the salinity difference between the water of a river and the water of the ocean is enormous. (It basically works like this: You have two containers with water of different salinities, connected with a membrane that only lets the water pass, but not the salt. The water will move through the membrane to balance the salinity - osmosis - and one container will have a rising water level, which can be used to generate electricity with turbines.)
- s0rce 10y agoWouldn't it be better to simply recycle the non-salty water instead?
- kaybe 10y agoDepends. You only need a difference in salinity, not non-salty water. If the brine is much more saline than the ocean, there's your energy potential. On the other hand, this kind of power plant also goes well at the mouth of a river. You don't need clean water at all. I don't know about California, is all the fresh water fully recycled until the rivers are dry? That would be hard to imagine.
- CN7R 10y agoI don't think the rivers would run dry if we recycled waste water, as a majority of it is just dumped into the ocean.
- elliottcarlson 10y agoThough, wouldn't there be a potential for more industrial based uses of the salt? http://eusalt.com/salt-uses http://eusalt.com/salt-uses Also, see http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/road-salt-winters-2-3-billion-game-changer-n308416 http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/road-salt-winters-2-...