3 ms·

Isn't the whole reason it releases brine is because energy isn't free? You'd just run thermal desalination to a 100% reaction of salt water = salt + water and

• mlsu 2y ago
  Well, the energy isn't free, so you'd definitely be doing osmosis and making brine (osmosis is like 1/5 the energy compared to distillation). But even if it were and you could run thermal desalinization. It's a LOT of salt. And the salt is not pure -- it's "salt" in a chemical sense, not a table salt sense, which you'd then have to purify, removing heavy metals, pollutants, etc. At rates of desalination that would service an appreciable amount of drinking/household water, you would no longer be selling the salt, you'd be disposing of it. Because there would be too much of it to sell. The honest to god ONLY place you can naturally dispose of a lot of salt is the ocean, for the same reason that its there in the first place.