4 ms·
Gibbs Free Energy is pretty much a hard physics limit. Trying to pull gold out of the ocean to pay for pulling salt out of the ocean is --again not a chemist b
by Avshalom 3y ago
Gibbs Free Energy is pretty much a hard physics limit.
Trying to pull gold out of the ocean to pay for pulling salt out of the ocean is --again not a chemist but-- probably thermodynamically worse.
- iancmceachern 3y agoThat's my point. It's not a single thing, it's not about making it add up trying to do one thing, but if you batch them together and say, use thr waste heat from one process to power the next, etc. One can find new efficiencies. Of course I'm not saying we need to break the laws of thermodynamics, in my house we obey the laws of thermodynamics. In this case, the work needed is defined by the features of the RO membrane. It's conceivable that we could develop a RO membrane that requires less pressure or energy to operate. In fact they have been. In that case, we would gain a more efficient process, while still obeying the laws of thermodynamics
- daedrdev 3y agoI see this view a lot on HN, but this kind of wish for great new development can be unrealistic simple because there are no more low hanging fruit for these very physical processes. It could easily be the case that RO is going to see only marginal improvements for the next decade or two (except perhaps some test membranes that are too expensive), and modern RO already uses energy recovery in the process.
- iancmceachern 3y agoThis seems highly speculative