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All of our fresh water comes from evaporation and precipitation. I'm curious if there have been attempts to increase evaporation as a means of producing water i

All of our fresh water comes from evaporation and precipitation. I'm curious if there have been attempts to increase evaporation as a means of producing water in areas with excess solar energy. I know industrial plants use reverse osmosis, but is there somewhere experimenting with creating structures to encourage evaporation and then capturing the water vapor at scale? (Passively, I mean. I know we can just boil water at scale with expensive industrial systems.)

adrianN 4y ago
Planting lots of trees is a moderately successful way of combating desertification.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I know sea salt is produced by filling up big pools and letting the sun do its thing, but capturing the water is challenging. Although come to think of it, existing greenhouse technology would work, "just" fill a greenhouse with a layer of water or let it mist, then capture the precipitation off the roof. I'm pretty sure it needs a way to passively cool the thing though. I'm also sure there's a lot of factors why this wouldn't work, probably due to scalability compared to alternatives like reverse osmosis, land use, etc.
- cestith 4y ago
  Solar stills work by putting something that can be as simple as a sheet of clear plastic over a hole in the ground, and putting a bowl under the peak of the sheet. A greenhouse with a brackish pool and a way to collect the precipitation would be a scaled up version. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/solar-still https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/solar-still https://duckduckgo.com/?q=solar+still&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=solar+still&iax=images&ia=images
rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
>I'm curious if there have been attempts to increase evaporation as a means of producing water in areas with excess solar energy. I guess we'd yield far better results in the long term by investing to lower greenhouse gas emissions anywhere in the world. We're still building coal plants in 2022!

adrianN 4y ago

Planting lots of trees is a moderately successful way of combating desertification.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

I know sea salt is produced by filling up big pools and letting the sun do its thing, but capturing the water is challenging. Although come to think of it, existing greenhouse technology would work, "just" fill a greenhouse with a layer of water or let it mist, then capture the precipitation off the roof. I'm pretty sure it needs a way to passively cool the thing though. I'm also sure there's a lot of factors why this wouldn't work, probably due to scalability compared to alternatives like reverse osmosis, land use, etc.

cestith 4y ago
Solar stills work by putting something that can be as simple as a sheet of clear plastic over a hole in the ground, and putting a bowl under the peak of the sheet. A greenhouse with a brackish pool and a way to collect the precipitation would be a scaled up version. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/solar-still https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/solar-still https://duckduckgo.com/?q=solar+still&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=solar+still&iax=images&ia=images

rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago

>I'm curious if there have been attempts to increase evaporation as a means of producing water in areas with excess solar energy. I guess we'd yield far better results in the long term by investing to lower greenhouse gas emissions anywhere in the world. We're still building coal plants in 2022!