yeah from what i understand the desalination technology is there, the problem is what to do with all the salt. you can dump it on the ocean, creating a dead sea zone. or you can dump somewhere on land, creating a dead land zone.
the only solution is the gene mod humans so we can eat larger and larger intakes of salt.
You don’t have to dump it undiluted in the ocean. You can mix it with an outgoing treated wastewater stream if your system doesn’t recycle it (or if you do recycle it then you have less need for more fresh water so your desalination plant can be smaller), or disperse it over a larger area for a gentler salinity gradient.
The real problem, as with anything, is the cost that would add. But if this technology can produce water for a negligible ongoing cost, that might be worthwhile.
This Practical Engineering video gives a great overview of the challenges and some of the existing solutions with desalination, including how to get rid of concentrated saltwater waste (in the context of reverse osmosis desalination, which this tech is kind of a hybrid of reverse osmosis and distillation).
Would it really create a dead sea zone? I mean to desalinate, you’re pulling the water out, extracting salt. So effectively taking water from the ocean without the salt. Surely putting it back isn’t going to be massive issue as currents will push out more salty water to less salty areas until it is back to where it was.
I guess the art of it would be the rate of returning it to the sea, and the surface area over where it is put back. Longed pipes to deeper water will probably make a less horrific situation, as more water = less salt concentration.
Though, we shouldn’t rule out make a deal with social media, the share level of salt involved probably needs replenishing.
it seems that the sheer amount of salt we accumulate when desalinating for scale consumption is so large that there’s no easy way to spread it. yeah, the ocean will take care of it eventually, but we aren’t gonna ferry salt across a large body of water to dump it gently into the ocean. we’ll pipe it somewhere, and wherever it is it will create a pocket of dead ocean water. it’s a matter of choice and water regulation, really.
Salt is highly corrosive, especially when concentrated into a slurry. If you dump it directly from shore you kill any local wildlife and destroy the local area before it dilutes. If you pipe it further out into the ocean the pipe will continually need maintenance due to corrosion and makes it more expensive
Isn’t that assuming you pipe it out using metal. Would plastic or carbon fibre be viable for this? Or at least coating a metal pipe?
