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if only desalination wasn't so difficult. it'd solve so many things.
by stOneskull 3y ago
if only desalination wasn't so difficult. it'd solve so many things.
- ReptileMan 3y agoWell desalination for residential is ok financially in high income countries. It costs 5$ for 1000 gallons and that is the monthly consumption of a household
- recursive 3y ago$5/month/household sounds like it would work for all but the very poorest of countries.
- TylerE 3y agoFor costal regions, sure. Anything further inland? Pumping water uphill is incredibly energy intensive.
- thmsths 3y agoThat would still help those regions too, a lot of coastal cities get their water from quite far away, if they can become self sufficient through desalination, that's more water available for other regions.
- peteradio 3y agoWell gosh put in bottles and truck it then!
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago40% of the world lives within 100km from the sea.
- mnw21cam 3y agoI currently pay £4.42 per 1000l for a normal mains piped water supply (and for the drainage system to take that water away again). 1000 gallons is 4546l, so the cost for desalination is £0.86 for 1000l by your price. Sounds like desalination is worth it even in soggy England (which hasn't been soggy at all until a few days ago).
- HDThoreaun 3y agoI think that's only for coastal areas. Once you include pumping costs it gets much more expensive.
- scythe 3y agoIronically, the one place that desal pumping would be almost free is the Imperial Valley, which is below sea level, though across a roughly 80-meter col (7 km horizontal) from Laguna de Salada. But they have among the oldest Colorado river rights — to fully 20% of the theoretically available flow — and couldn't afford the electricity, requiring some Rube Goldberg finance to make the whole scheme work out.
- czbond 3y agoThanks for mentioning a rough cost estimate of desalination. I've always wanted to know.
- mywittyname 3y agoDesalination is an ecological disaster at any scale large enough to be useful. That excess salt needs to go somewhere and wherever it goes, it will be a problem.
- TremendousJudge 3y agoput all salt making companies out of business, then whatever's left just carry it by train and put it in an old salt mine
- ajmurmann 3y agoWould it have a meaningful impact on the ocean if we threw the salt back in?
- gavinsyancey 3y ago"The ocean" is not a monolith. You have to pump the brine back into the ocean in a specific location (i.e. wherever the outflow pipe from the desalination plant is). And that has meaningful negative local ecological impacts.
- mywittyname 3y agoYes, absolutely. The supersaturated brine produced as a byproduct decimates local ocean life when it's pumped back into the ocean. It's already a problem while desalination is rare. Imagine how bad it will be at "human-scale". And you can't just divert the brine onto land. Where ever you put it will be salted earth - completely unlivable. And it will probably pollute ground waters.
- anthonypasq 3y agocant you just bury it in a desert/mountain or something?
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoThere is no "away" on a finite planet that has humans on every continent.
- silisili 3y agoIs that just the price of the process, or does that price include the transport and dumping or otherwise handling the waste salts?