The water we make is not the problem. Brine is the problem. If we filtered enough potable water from the seas to satisfy the needs of 6 billion people, the mountains of resulting brine -- even after processing the saleable minerals -- would be staggering. If we dump the brine back into the seas, the oceans would become saltier than ever, killing most marine life. If we dump the brine on the earth that land would never again be arable -- and the salt would still wash out to sea.
Wow - I had no idea the southeast was in such a drought, we were in one in Texas until this past summer that filled up all the lakes. I hope they get a wet fall and winter to fill up their water tables. DD
Even if that happens, drought will occur here and there with increasing frequency. It's in the hands of scientists and entrepreneurs to solve the problem....and, once solved, it will be up to all of us to solve the problems those solutions cause.
No, we can. Potable water from the oceans is a very real solution. It's solving the brine conundrum that keeps the water from flowing from the sea rather than to the sea.
Exactly you can get the water, but what do you do with the left over salt? It is like nuclear waste. DD
Uh, it has worked in reducing the demand for oil. Just because there is still demand for oil despite the high prices doesn't mean demand hasn't been reduced. That's why there are so many calls for a carbon tax.
i guess i am confused because i know absolutely nothing about the brine problem. my simple mind thought that it wasn't a big deal if the salt returns to the ocean but after looking at common sense i can see it's a major problem. i guess i just thought that mother nature would eventually return the salt free water to the oceans thru evaporation. also, is it equally bad to make the water less salty? and i just did a little research it seems like they have solutions to the brine problem but it seems like they would require a good amount of work to lay down the infrastructure for them.
Water can't be too pure for recycling. It gets impure quickly enough. What are the solutions for the brine via infrastructure? Even if they fill salt domes or dump it in the desert, we still get those "salt of the earth" problems just on volume alone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination so basically we would have to lay out a lot of pipes to disperse the brine somewhat uniformly.
Wiki Alert: Never trust any information you get from wikipedia. That said, I wonder whether those scientists have considered piping the brine down into the oceanic abyss, say to 3,000 feet or lower where the water is not very salty at all. The salt would float up but would have time to dissipate. The problem would be the enormous pressure at those depths.
That's why scientists need to coupled with entrepreneurs. The latter is greedy enough (in a good way) to get'r done.
Disposing of brine more of an issue than the energy required to desalinate? Really? Why not ship it to the ever more desalinated Arctic? They are worried about fresh water disrupting the ocean currents. Of course, you don't just dump brine all at once but a week tour of the arctic while slowly releasing brine sounds like a simple enough solution.
Both are immense problems if this technology is scaled up to meet uncontrolled demand. Thus my comments on conservation.
Really. What is strange is that the sea holds the answer to providing the energy to create the fresh water. There is active technology that is being constantly improved where oceanic "reverse windmills" using solar energy or wave action to generate electricity. That electricity could be used to desalinate the water and, in time, for other purposes as well. Of course, with global warming and the subsequent new ice age fresh water won't be as much of a concern. Arable land will be.
We use a lot of salt around the world. We use salt to melt ice on roads. We use it in chemical plants as an "ingredient" or as part of a process in manufacturing other chemicals. All the salt we currently use is mined from the earth. Lets force all chemical plants to stop mining for salt. If they want salt, they must extract it from the ocean. The waste product in this process would be ....fresh water. The trick would be, how do you get that fresh water to places that need it. But we've solved how to get oil and electricity to places that need it. Hell, the anceint Romans figured out how to move fresh water. So I'm sure we could figure out something.
