3 ms·
If you operate it directly on the open ocean, towing it behind your sailboat, you don't have to do anything special. If you operate it in a commercial, protect
by dsr_ 5y ago
If you operate it directly on the open ocean, towing it behind your sailboat, you don't have to do anything special.
If you operate it in a commercial, protected context where you pump water through it, you will generate brine.
If you operate it en-masse in the ocean, the things that are insignificant at the scale of 1 and 10 square meters may become significant at the scale of 1 and 10 square kilometers.
All of these things are true for other desalinization systems, too. Claiming "you don't have to worry about brine" because it floats on the water surface is misleading at best. You can put any system you want on the water and make it float -- we have concrete and steel hulls, no problem -- but that doesn't solve the concentration problem.
- jonas21 5y agoIt sounds like they're targeting small deployments in the developing world, at the scale of 1 to 10 square meters, not large commercial systems. From the article: > In production, they think a system built to serve the needs of a family might be built for around $100... The hope is that it could ultimately play a role in alleviating water scarcity in parts of the developing world where reliable electricity is scarce but seawater and sunlight are abundant. The problem with brine from desalination plants is that it's released at high concentration in one spot. This would not suffer from that problem.