3 ms·
To my surprise the cost of desalination is quite low. It's nowhere near the price of bottled water. $2,710 per acre-foot is $2 per cubic meter or $0,01 per gal
by closedloop129 4y ago
To my surprise the cost of desalination is quite low. It's nowhere near the price of bottled water.
$2,710 per acre-foot is $2 per cubic meter or $0,01 per gallon.
But it's not profitable for regular crops:
Crops need about 700mm of water [1], so 0.7m, which is $1.4 per square meter.
Maize/corn can be sold for $0.13 per square meter [2].
However, other crops like lavender can be sold for $5 per square meter.
The price of desalination must be energy bound. Does this mean that in coastal deserts, when renewable energy brings energy prices down to 1/10, it starts being profitable to grow regular crops with desalinated water?
[1] http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/content/water-requirement-different-crops http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/content/water-requirement-differ...
[2] https://entrepreneur-360.com/most-profitable-crops-9945 https://entrepreneur-360.com/most-profitable-crops-9945
- credit_guy 4y agoCAPEX for desal plants is not negligible. The San Diego plant cost $1 BN for a daily output of 50 mil gallons. If you intend to amortize the plant in 20 years, it comes at 0.27 cents/galon. So even if you get free energy, you are far from your target of 0.1 cents per gallon. By the way, thanks for running the numbers. I checked them, amd they are correct, with the small observation that recently the pricd of corn has gone up more than twice.
- mrep 4y agoYou are off my 2 orders of magnitude: $1,000,000,000 / (50,000,000 gallons * 365 days per year * 20 years) = $0.00273972602 per gallon.
- credit_guy 4y ago$0.0027 is the same as 0.27 cents.
- mrep 4y agoAh, my mistake, not used to reading multiple fractions used together.