4 ms·
can that brine be used for other things? This might sound silly to a knowledgeable person, but isn't salt worth something? If the infrastructure is available,
by rtpg 11y ago
can that brine be used for other things? This might sound silly to a knowledgeable person, but isn't salt worth something?
If the infrastructure is available, it would be interesting to force things like watering lawns with only water from something like a desalination plant.
- saalweachter 11y agoA study in 2000 found that a household in California used 132,000 gallons of water per year. 132,000 gallons of water weighs 550 tons, and seawater is 3.5% salt, desalinating 550 tons of water would (optimally) produce something like 20 tons of salt. To supply 10 million households with drinking water from sea water, then, produces 200 million tons of salt. The current global salt market is 250 million tons, at a price of about $50 / ton. I find it unlikely that the market would bear dumping that much salt on it at a price that would make producing the salt worth it. Disposal is probably a cheaper course.
- brianwawok 11y agoThe city of Chicago alone uses an average of 215,000 TONS of salt per year to melt ice.. http://www.wbez.org/series/curious-city/how-much-road-salt-ends-lake-michigan-109814 http://www.wbez.org/series/curious-city/how-much-road-salt-e... Obviously a little drive, but salt prices are high up here ;)
- cc438 11y agoThe current salt market is based on a supply of actively produced salt. Only ~7%* of worldwide production is "solar salt", derived from evaporating sea water. The rest is actively mined or extracted by other methods. Dumping 200 million tons of new "solar salt" on the market would collapse prices and signal the end for the existing player in the salt industry. I don't think this would be an issue in the long term as salt derived from a hypothetical mass-desalinization industry is essentially free. Replacing heavy industry with the byproduct of an essential and beneficial process is the very definition of economic and environmental efficiency. California gets a secure water supply, consumers and industry get cheaper salt, and the imprint of the salt mining industry is no longer a concern in the environment. *Source: http://www.saltinstitute.org/salt-101/production-industry/ http://www.saltinstitute.org/salt-101/production-industry/
- a3n 11y agoI don't know the source of salt in solar powered molten salt steam plants. Maybe this brine could be at the front end of that production process?
- avn2109 11y agoSolar thermal plants use a working fluid that happens to be sometimes called "salt" but is a totally different thing from the salt that is in ocean water.