3 ms·
Spoiler: desalination requires a lot of energy.
by runjake 3y ago
Spoiler: desalination requires a lot of energy.
- konschubert 3y agoSolar is cheap
- grej 3y agoSolar is cheap when active, and the good news this is one of the cases where intermittency doesn't really matter. We should really explore more use of intermittent power for cases like this where the limited reliability of wind and solar is less significant.
- nwiswell 3y agoIt's still significant if it means that your desalination plant is only active 50% of the time, since it means you need twice the capacity.
- grej 3y agoTrue. This condition only holds in situations where the energy costs dominate the physical plant costs
- lopis 3y agoFortunately, water usage is correlated with sun intensity.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Groxx 3y agoIf solar was cheap enough, it would be used. In a handful of places, it is. In the rest, it's so much more expensive than alternatives that it's borderline insanity to use it. Like ice: ice is cheap in Antarctica! But importing Antarctic ice to a desert would be absurd.
- AnotherGoodName 3y agoAlthough it shouldn't. Adding salt to water is endothermic, it absorbs energy to add salt and releases it to separate them. The article talks about the trouble of breaking the bonds but this is wrong. It's harder to break the na-cl bond to make salt water in the first place. We just haven't found a good process. That's it. Cheap desalination is not physically impossible. The deep ocean separation that someone here mentioned seems quite promising and gives off energy which is expected. Salt has weak bonds in water and when they reform the na-cl bond there's a lot of energy to be had.