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What is the process by which drinking water is extracted from seawater, and does that give you any savings at all with regards to a goal of extracting minerals?
by Consultant32452 5y ago
What is the process by which drinking water is extracted from seawater, and does that give you any savings at all with regards to a goal of extracting minerals?
- colechristensen 5y agoYou either boil it or force it through a semi-permiable membrane. In both methods you get two products: one one side pure water, on the other water with a higher concentration of non-water things as waste, most often just dumped back into the ocean. That waste stream is just a bit closer to the end product than taking from the sea directly.
- pfdietz 5y agoThe most common approach is reverse osmosis. This yields a waste brine that is up to 2x as concentrated as seawater. That's not negligible: it would reduce the cost of Li extraction that is proportional to mass flow by a factor of 2.