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You're right, that was sloppy of me. It sounded right, but I think Melbourne Water statistics probably truly are dominated by domestic use, since it's a city.
by nwiswell 3y ago
You're right, that was sloppy of me. It sounded right, but I think Melbourne Water statistics probably truly are dominated by domestic use, since it's a city.
You can see the numbers don't match up; you're using a figure of 16T liters annually, whereas 25 million people * 50 gallons / day-person * 365 days * 3.785 liters/gallon is 1.727T trillion liters annually.
Anyway, I am suspicious of the 600 AUD/ML figure, or else a lot more Gulf states would be food independent.
- Veserv 3y agoYes. Domestic use is a tiny fraction of all water usage. However, as you point out it is necessary to incorporate the food water to determine actual water independence. 600 AUD/ML is ~400 USD/ML. The Sorek B plant in Israel is profitably contracted at ~0.40 USD/m^3 [1] which is comparable. That is one of the largest plants with cutting edge technology and one of the cheapest prices I have seen in my research. A quote of 600 AUD/ML for desalinated water right now in Australia seems a tad questionable, but not outside of what is possible. 2-3x that number is almost certainly believable (though they almost certainly do not have bulk scale) and would only increase the costs to 1.5% of GDP. [1] https://ildesal.org.il/sorek-b-desalination-plant/ https://ildesal.org.il/sorek-b-desalination-plant/