7 ms·
good thing people need salt!
by ericlewis 3y ago
good thing people need salt!
- stouset 3y agoIf people needed as much salt as was contained in the water to begin with, we wouldn’t need to remove it in the first place.
- suddenclarity 3y agoNo reason to keep the 1:1 ratio. Use the salt to replace our current salt mines/outtakes and then use the water as an addition to our current freshwater usage.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Retric 3y agoThe waste stream doesn’t contain that much more salt than seawater. Extracting salt from mines is much cheaper than extracting it from slightly brackish wastewater from water treatment plants.
- giantrobot 3y agoThe brine waste from RO is still mostly water. In order to extract the salt you'd need to evaporate the water which still takes a lot more energy. You could use evaporative ponds to let the Sun do the work but that takes a lot of space. In either case you're spending a lot more money per pound than just digging the salt out of a mine.
- eropple 3y agoIs that true when we take into account environmental externalities? I am not an expert in this field; I know that many forms of mining are capital-B Bad for the environment but I don't know how salt mines impact the area around them.
- pas 3y agowell, mines are bad on the short term. the long term damage is not of the actual digging, but of the separation processes. which all can be done as clean as we wish it just costs more.
- actionfromafar 3y agoCost more energy
- Retric 3y agoMining salt costs vastly less energy than using slightly brackish water. Which is why it’s so much cheaper.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rs999gti 3y ago> https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61483491 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61483491 Nuclear desalination like on naval ships is the answer. US and Russian ships already have the technology, it just needs to be scaled for use on land.
- eru 3y agoNuclear power in general would be the answer to a lot of energy problems. But the general public in most places doesn't like it.
- pvaldes 3y agoIs not just a question of preferences, there are risks also. If the problem is that we need lots of energy to create pressure to separate salt from brine, well... I figure out that there is a lot of free "all that you can eat" pressure in the sea bottom. The problem would be to calculate if moving all this weight up and down the sea (and in open sea) would be economical or not. Or of would unavoidably lead to people cutting corners and release part of the salt to the deep water ecosystems. Deep water masses are salty yet so a small amount of salt would impact less here than if released on surface, thats for sure. In any case, physic laws about density and mass are our friend. Things either float or sink without extra energy added.
- pvaldes 3y agoHaving all of this in mind, I would go further and propose to regulate by law changing the material of the deep sea submarine ballasts. It seems technically doable and would have some benefits 1) Lesser impact on deep sea ecosystems. No human trace left behind. Disposable loads of iron or concrete will remain forever in the bottom. If we use salt or sand instead the impact on fragile deep sea ecosystems seems reduced. The organisms there are adapted naturally to deal with very salty water. The sand or salt ballast could be released gradually over a bigger surface reducing even more the impact over a particular spot or colony 2) Improved economics? To dump valuable iron made with valuable energy into the sea seems a suboptimal solution. Substitute it with some common by products that are yet in the area and don't need to be transported from a mine far away could save some money probably. Containers of ballast would be fully recyclable also. Ships could be adapted to literally making part the ballast on the open sea while in campaign, instead to need to carry all of it from a port. 3) Extra safety. If your load weight gets stuck by a net you are trapped in the bottom forever, With a ballast of sand or salt you have the extra possibility of open a few escape valves and let the concentrated salt go away. You can also release part of the weight much more gradually. After a while the submarine would tend to float and ascend automatically even if the energy supply would have been entirely lost in an accident. Having the machine on the surface (or closer to the surface) would save millions and would made a big difference on humanitary and economical aspects of the rescue operation. A damaged submarine can be still repaired. Building another would be much more expensive. Dunno about the possible negative aspects, more volume required for example, but would deserve thinking about it a little more.
- mschuster91 3y agoThe problem is that salt brine from seawater contains a lot of side stuff - you still need purification at a scale you don't need mining rock salt.
- fsckboy 3y agois this true? I can understand why it would be true, but "sea salt" is a real thing that's been traditionally made in seaside communities through to today, and I find it hard to believe they're cleaning it at anything finer than a gross scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleur_de_sel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleur_de_sel
- actionfromafar 3y agoIt increasingly has plastic and other crap in it.
- myshpa 3y agoMicroplastics found in 90 percent of table salt https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/microplastics-found-90-percent-table-salt-sea-salt https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/micro... The presence of microplastics in commercial salts from different countries [2017] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep46173 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep46173 Global Pattern of Microplastics (MPs) in Commercial Food-Grade Salts: Sea Salt as an Indicator of Seawater MP Pollution [2018] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b04180 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b04180 Microplastic pollution in commercial salt for human consumption: A review [2019] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331006661_Microplastic_pollution_in_commercial_salt_for_human_consumption_A_review https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331006661_Microplas... "MPs have been found in commercial salts from 128 brands, from 38 different countries spanning over five continents."
- fsckboy 3y agothank you for the information, for sure, but i was responding to the claim that sea salt "needs cleaning" to point out that that seasalt isn't being cleaned, so it puts an upper bound on the value of need as it concerns the commercial market including govt regulation. My suspicion was that where would be more to worry about from single-celled life detritus, heavy metals, forever chemicals etc, but the marketplace doesn't seem to be worried about that. I go about my daily life not worrying about microplastics (I know they are ubiquitous, and I'm not in favor of them, I just don't worry about them) Are microplastics known to cause particular diseases, or just suspected on the grounds that they "couldn't be good"? plastic is pretty inert which is why it remains around for so long, and while it is made from toxic things, it's generally considered safe. I'm just curious about actual microplastic effects rather than the sort of "it's estrogenizing our boys, antivax...er-plastic" suspicions.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- scythe 3y agoNot quite that simple. Even isotonic water would probably be too corrosive for existing pipework.
- rs999gti 3y agoCan't the salt just be dumped in the desert?
- stouset 3y agoThe products of desalinization aren’t salt and fresh water. They’re somewhat saltier brine and fresh water.
- rs999gti 3y agoSounds like it's time for USA to get another Salton Sea
- SoftTalker 3y agoJust pump it back into the ocean. The little bit of concentrated brine from a desalination plant will be quickly diluted; the ocean contains a LOT of water.
- Fatnino 3y agoNeed for uses other than eating. Like de-icing roads.
- Loquebantur 3y agoThe people who need that water tend to shed it after some time. Discarding waste water into the oceans via rivers is a huge idiocy. You essentially rely on the environment to "magically" sort it all out. Naively so and fraught with huge inefficiencies. Proper treatment of that waste in the sense of recovering usable matter streams is the logical way to go.
- daveslash 3y agoI know that generally speaking, disposing of waste in the ocean and expecting it to disperse enough to be harmless is foolish and wrong. But in the case of salt, It would seem to me that the ocean can handle that amount of salt. Course, I haven't done the math. But it would seem to me that the back in == salt taken out. We'd only be changing the net salinity by the amount of water subtracted. Without having done the math, my gut reaction is to think that's something the ocean can handle. The problem, as I see it, is localized concentrations. While the ocean at large might be able to absorb it, the localized concentrations can be very problematic.
- londons_explore 3y agoThere are potentially some good reasons to just spray the brine into the air. Seawater sprayed into the air becomes tiny salt crystals, which in turn help clouds to form, and cause increased rainfall. The rain produced has negligible levels of salt. In places with dry climates, this often can turn desert land into farmland across an area hundreds of kilometers wide.
- singleshot_ 3y agoSurely the salt falling on the farmland would have some kind of deleterious effects, right? I imagine you’re not trying to grow sea cucumbers in this scenario, and I’m not sure most land plants would be crazy about a ton of salt. Just ask the Carthaginians… Guessing that you know something I don’t here, though.
- 3y ago
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoWith enough desalination, the Romans will be able to afford a huge army!