With my (admittedly limited) understanding of the topic, extracting the water from ocean water is a relatively simple process.
The problem is what do you do with the brine afterwards. The process featured in the article makes it harder for the brine to clog the system, which is admittedly an important step. But you can’t put the brine back into the ocean without risking killing local wildlife.
And I’m not under the impression that there are any practical uses for brine, at least not at that scale.
Of course, we’ll put the brine back into the ocean. We can run pipelines out miles to disperse the brine and dilute it. We’ll need regulation to ensure this, because no capitalist corporation will do anything that cuts into profits without regulations forcing it.
Second only to air, fresh water is what we all need. We’ll do what we must to have it. Of this I’m certain.
Well this would be mixing the treated water with the salt … which in theory should get close-ish to the amount of water put into the system/the original balance
It actually sounds pretty reasonable at least on the surface.
Another idea might be shipping that off for cheap road ice control in states with winter weather
I’ve always wondered why we can’t contain the brine and pack it into abandoned salt mines for long-term storage. It would probably inspire some maintenance on abandoned salt mines and prevent cave-ins.
Maybe have ocean voyaging ships (e.g. container ships) do controlled release of brine through their journey?
Though probably no way of achieving this via current economic and legal systems. Even if attempted today, ships would probably be incentivized to dump the entire payload the moment they cross into internal waters.
With my (admittedly limited) understanding of the topic, extracting the water from ocean water is a relatively simple process.
The problem is what do you do with the brine afterwards. The process featured in the article makes it harder for the brine to clog the system, which is admittedly an important step. But you can’t put the brine back into the ocean without risking killing local wildlife.
And I’m not under the impression that there are any practical uses for brine, at least not at that scale.
There are no perfect solutions.
Of course, we’ll put the brine back into the ocean. We can run pipelines out miles to disperse the brine and dilute it. We’ll need regulation to ensure this, because no capitalist corporation will do anything that cuts into profits without regulations forcing it.
Second only to air, fresh water is what we all need. We’ll do what we must to have it. Of this I’m certain.
Would it be posible to salinate the waste water that goes back to the ocean from treatment plants?
I think the problem is that it’s too salinated and needs to be put back into the ocean slowly over a wide area.
Well this would be mixing the treated water with the salt … which in theory should get close-ish to the amount of water put into the system/the original balance
It actually sounds pretty reasonable at least on the surface.
Another idea might be shipping that off for cheap road ice control in states with winter weather
There’s a lot more in the salt than just salt, probably introducing a bunch of issues into trying to use it for deicing roads.
I’ve always wondered why we can’t contain the brine and pack it into abandoned salt mines for long-term storage. It would probably inspire some maintenance on abandoned salt mines and prevent cave-ins.
Maybe have ocean voyaging ships (e.g. container ships) do controlled release of brine through their journey?
Though probably no way of achieving this via current economic and legal systems. Even if attempted today, ships would probably be incentivized to dump the entire payload the moment they cross into internal waters.
Clump it into a big ball and send to space!