3 ms·

Pipes to quench a 10-million city through 100 kms of mountains (140km by road), going up 2 kms from the sea level? That's more than Israel's max distance from t

Pipes to quench a 10-million city through 100 kms of mountains (140km by road), going up 2 kms from the sea level? That's more than Israel's max distance from the sea (and it's mostly flat).

FridayoLeary 1y ago
I'm ignorant but aren't oil pipelines much longer? They don't need to traverse mountain ranges but still. Either way i can't imagine such a project would be possible in an emergency time scale without the combined assistance of the US, Israel (desalination experts) and China. i know absolutely nothing about these things, so i don't know if it's even theoretically possible with their help.
- jojobas 1y ago
  Apparently the highest oil pipeline throughput (Druzhba) is 1.4 million barrels per day, which amounts to some 2000 liters per second. That would be 20 liters/person/day - kinda maybe enough to move the needle, but not quite. Building this sort of pipeline today is about $1-2M per km on flat land. I'm not aware of comparable pipelines in the mountains. Then, desalination requires energy, and Iran already faces blackouts here and there, there just isn't much spare capacity.
  - rzerowan 1y ago
    I think on a similar scale would be the Chinese South–North Water Transfer Project , which has taken several decades to eventually move 44.8 cubic km of fresh water via canls/aqueducts etc through some mountanious terrain. Or the undground Great Man-Made River Project of Libya moving 6.5 million cubic meters over 2,820 km. Main issue ther though is the first is from already present freshwater sources and the latter from underground aquifers. With both having been done over multilpe decades to reach that capacity. Finding the water to move would be the main challenge, een though the Caspian is less saline than ocean water - there are probably water usage agreemets with the neighbourign countries preventing a massive undertaking of such size.
  - dzhiurgis 1y ago
    > 2000 liters per second Some people will try to blame EVs for environmental damage when we have this monstrosity.
    - jojobas 1y ago
      EVs are charged to a degree by Russian natural gas fed by another pipeline (13% or EU gas now).
  - ImJamal 1y ago
    > That would be 20 liters/person/day - kinda maybe enough to move the needle, but not quite. That is enough for drinking and probably enough for cooking which should be the priority in a situation like this.
throwup238 1y ago
The California State Water Project [1] pumps water for over 25 million people across 1,100 kilometers over 1.5km of mountains. It's possible, but that said, the CSWP is one of the largest civil engineering projects in human history and the largest single user of electricity in the state so it's no small feat. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project

Pipes to quench a 10-million city through 100 kms of mountains (140km by road), going up 2 kms from the sea level? That's more than Israel's max distance from the sea (and it's mostly flat).

FridayoLeary 1y ago

I'm ignorant but aren't oil pipelines much longer? They don't need to traverse mountain ranges but still. Either way i can't imagine such a project would be possible in an emergency time scale without the combined assistance of the US, Israel (desalination experts) and China. i know absolutely nothing about these things, so i don't know if it's even theoretically possible with their help.

jojobas 1y ago
Apparently the highest oil pipeline throughput (Druzhba) is 1.4 million barrels per day, which amounts to some 2000 liters per second. That would be 20 liters/person/day - kinda maybe enough to move the needle, but not quite. Building this sort of pipeline today is about $1-2M per km on flat land. I'm not aware of comparable pipelines in the mountains. Then, desalination requires energy, and Iran already faces blackouts here and there, there just isn't much spare capacity.
- rzerowan 1y ago
  I think on a similar scale would be the Chinese South–North Water Transfer Project , which has taken several decades to eventually move 44.8 cubic km of fresh water via canls/aqueducts etc through some mountanious terrain. Or the undground Great Man-Made River Project of Libya moving 6.5 million cubic meters over 2,820 km. Main issue ther though is the first is from already present freshwater sources and the latter from underground aquifers. With both having been done over multilpe decades to reach that capacity. Finding the water to move would be the main challenge, een though the Caspian is less saline than ocean water - there are probably water usage agreemets with the neighbourign countries preventing a massive undertaking of such size.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  > 2000 liters per second Some people will try to blame EVs for environmental damage when we have this monstrosity.
  - jojobas 1y ago
    EVs are charged to a degree by Russian natural gas fed by another pipeline (13% or EU gas now).
- ImJamal 1y ago
  > That would be 20 liters/person/day - kinda maybe enough to move the needle, but not quite. That is enough for drinking and probably enough for cooking which should be the priority in a situation like this.

throwup238 1y ago

The California State Water Project [1] pumps water for over 25 million people across 1,100 kilometers over 1.5km of mountains. It's possible, but that said, the CSWP is one of the largest civil engineering projects in human history and the largest single user of electricity in the state so it's no small feat. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project