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That's great news! Now if they can solve the same problem with sea water, California, Arizona and Nevada can reduce their reliance on the Colorado river and gro
by bastloing 2y ago
That's great news! Now if they can solve the same problem with sea water, California, Arizona and Nevada can reduce their reliance on the Colorado river and grow more crops. It is only a matter of time before it's solved. Great work, MIT!
- ttyprintk 2y agoIt’s a great application, but electrodialysis on seawater takes more power—-so much that distillation is competitive. The use-case chosen is remote freshwater wells which suffer from naturally-occurring arsenic. I can only think of a few others which can’t have heavy batteries.
- ttyprintk 2y agoHere’s a state-of-the-art portable prototype with pretreatment: 0.3 l/h at 20W: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31243621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31243621
- terramars 2y agoThis isn't really accurate, they're targeting industrial wastewater yes but they are working with and have tested brackish water up to several thousand TDS. They had a working EDR system for drinking water installed in Gaza until relatively recently and several in India as well. I'm also skeptical they can make it work with seawater, but it absolutely works with undrinkable brackish water in many other cases too.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fred_is_fred 2y agoEven if you could do this you'd have to pump the water back uphill to NV and AZ.
- dylan604 2y agoJust install some additional solar powered pumps along the way
- fred_is_fred 2y agoThe amount of energy needed to pump enough water for ag uphill is insane. Well beyond "just" throwing some solar panels out there. If it was that easy we'd pump Mississippi water into west Texas (which there was a plan to do in the 60s with nuke plants, but I cannot find the name right now).
- dylan604 2y agoi left off the /s as to me anytime someone starts a comment off with "just ____" is usually a farcical idea. like just remove the salt from water and boom, done.
- fred_is_fred 2y agoHah! It can be a very HN comment to "just" something especially around physical engineering.
- aidenn0 2y agoCould you save on pumping energy by sending the water to underground aquifers rather than the surface?
- bastloing 2y agoOk, so it's two problems to solve. Get on it MIT!
- itscrush 2y agoNo, start with modifying the Colorado River Compact and other underlying agreements to allow more upstream retention than is currently allotted.
- dylan604 2y agoGetting water to heat/boil is much less impressive than coming up with a solve for the left over salt/minerals. Solve that, then I'll join in the "Great work"
- SoftTalker 2y ago> the left over salt/minerals There is a commercial market for salt -- and for stuff like treating roads in the winter it doesn't have to be very clean. Otherwise, disolve it into the local waste water stream and discharge it back into the ocean.
- dylan604 2y agoIf this was the case, then why is the briny residue left after desalination always the thing that gets pointed back to being a big negative of desalination? Either it's not as big of deal as people suggest, you are wildly underplaying it, or somewhere in between. I've never felt that the argument against being the cost to heat the water was a strong one since salt water pretty much means a coastline which tends to have steady wind and sun. The biggest hang up has typically been putting that brine back into the ocean.