Break through in desalinization!

[Imran Siddiqui]

There are plenty of places where salt can be deposited under ground and stay put for millions of years. This is the reason salt mines can exist in regions that have no salt leaking into their ground water from those salt deposits. I don't think there is any practical limit to the amount of salt we could store in this manner.

That line of thinking is very dangerous. There is ALWAYS a limit to what we can store where. The amount of salt byproduct that will result from populating the ME and Saharan Africa like, say, Europe, will result in amazing quantities of salt. Building underground mines to store them all would be prohibitively expensive and after a while impracticle

[axi]

Reverse osmosis, even for seawater is known for many years. The problem is finding an energy source that is cheap enough in order to make it cost-effective. Wave power is considered to be used directly, by moving pumps that compress seawater directly into the desalination tubes.

i have checked out the water prices in Athens. Here are the prices for home use:
m3/month Euro/m3
0 - 5 0,38
5 - 20 0,59
20 - 27 1,70
27 - 35 2,38
> 35 2,97

As you can see, we too could use water at 0,52$/m3. If not in Athens proper, then definitely on thr islands.

[Gangerolf]

Originally posted by Azazel
Lancer: the problem is energy, now. You need to power those babies, you know...

He he. Around here we use freshwater to make energy. You want to use energy to make freshwater. That's almost ironic, I suppose.

Anyway, this is probably a good thing for the environment too if it means less strain on lakes, rivers and wetlands.

[The Mad Monk]

The key here is that it will be cheap RO -- something that has been absent previously.

We released the NeWater scheme one and a half years ago...there's about 14+ reverse osmosis plants scheduled to be built by 2010, in fact, for desalinization purposes

The NeWater site I was looking at was talking about recycling sewer water, not desalinization.

Though that's pretty cool, too.

[Space05us]

That means the world's big shortage of clean drinking water might just be solved. Previously desalinization cost 400%-500% more then cleaning fresh water so only a few plants in very rich countries were built. The new technology is cheap and easy to replicate even in the worst of conditions. That means every seaside city should be able to have a safe, clean, and reliable source of drinking water in the near future.

Great, in a century Barrow will be a tiny village of 5,000,000 instead of 5,000.

Where will they put the salt from the desalinization efforts? It will be toxic waste.

Sell it to the poor little countries in the Middle East and Saharan Africa, they can just stick it in thier deserts.

What could we do with unlimited water and power?

Overpopulate

As for the waste , it can safely be dumped in the arctic waters/ice that will soon be melting

Do you mean safely because it wont harm our sealife or beacuse you wont have to deal with it? If its the latter, I object.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Azazel

I guess Israel lives in a bubble or something. This technology is known in Israel for quite some time already....

Really?

Why is this news, then?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
I...doubt you have to worry about that.

Without looking into it further, I have to believe the "waste product" of these plants would be slightly saltier seawater, not salt solids or concentrated brine.

Arrrr, ye haven't paid attention to the Israeli chem plants on the Dead Sea, have ye? The salts they produce are toxic to all life, but they just dump them on the desert flats, cuz nothin' be livin' there anyway.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

There are plenty of places where salt can be deposited under ground and stay put for millions of years. This is the reason salt mines can exist in regions that have no salt leaking into their ground water from those salt deposits. I don't think there is any practical limit to the amount of salt we could store in this manner.

That line of thinking is very dangerous. There is ALWAYS a limit to what we can store where. The amount of salt byproduct that will result from populating the ME and Saharan Africa like, say, Europe, will result in amazing quantities of salt. Building underground mines to store them all would be prohibitively expensive and after a while impracticle

Nonesense. The only substances which we have ever had trouble storing in this matter are amazingly poisonous or radioactive substances. Salt is neither of these.

Not only could we store salt in this matter, but if we simply dumped it in the ocean depths we would be hard pressed to manage to remove as much freshwater from the oceans in that manner as was removed in the ice ages when enough freshwater was taken out of them to cover continents in mile thick sheets of ice. What's more, unlike in the iceage the freshwater we remove would tend to immediately find it's way back to the hydrosphere via run off and evaporation.

[chequita guevara]

Shiver me timbers, a land lubber.

[Ned]

The Israelies ought to build a plant for Gaza just as a goodwill gesture.

[chequita guevara]

Arrr, that will make up for all the water they've been theivin' from the West Bank, the dirty land lubbers.

[Ned]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Arrr, that will make up for all the water they've been theivin' from the West Bank, the dirty land lubbers.

Whatever. But the gesture would sure help accross the board in addition to improving the condition of Gaza.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Arrrr, ye haven't paid attention to the Israeli chem plants on the Dead Sea, have ye? The salts they produce are toxic to all life, but they just dump them on the desert flats, cuz nothin' be livin' there anyway.

Use yer eyes, ya scurvy dog!

The water that's goin' in, be goin out too, less'n a bit heaved t'th' other side!

If thars hard salt to be had, the filters arr scuppered and there'll be some dancing on the plank!

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
I...doubt you have to worry about that.

Without looking into it further, I have to believe the "waste product" of these plants would be slightly saltier seawater, not salt solids or concentrated brine.

It's not really the nature of the 'waste' produced that would be likely to upset things anyway. What you are really messing with is net supply of freshwater. The more freshwater that is removed from the oceans (either through 'natural' evaporation or artifical means) the saltier the oceans will have to become. That is, unless you choose to sequester the salt to balance things in which case you won't have to sequester very much, since the freshwater you remove in this process will eventually find it's way back to the oceans anyway. In that case if you removed and sequestered all of the salt you would actually decrease the salinity of the oceans.

[aneeshm]

I've got an idea for the disposal of salt . . .

Why not dump it in the Dead Sea ? It's a toxic hole with superhigh salt concentrations . No life in there . An increase in salinity in that place won't hurt anybody or anything . And the amount that could be dumped is practically limitless , even if finite .