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from the where's-my-solar-freakin'-cirruswaterfontuseer? dept.
The Dirty Truth about Turning Seawater into Drinking Water:
As countries in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere struggle to find enough freshwater to meet demand, they're increasingly turned to the ocean. Desalination plants, located in 177 countries, can help turn seawater into freshwater. Unfortunately, these plants also produce a lot of waste—more waste, in fact, than water for people to drink.
A paper published Monday by United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment, and Health in the journal Science of the Total Environment found that desalination plants globally produce enough brine—a salty, chemical-laden byproduct—in a year to cover all of Florida in nearly a foot of it. That's a lot of brine.
In fact, the study concluded that for every liter of freshwater a plant produces, 0.4 gallons (1.5 liters) of brine are produced on average. For all the 15,906 plants around the world, that means 37.5 billion gallons (142 billion liters) of this salty-ass junk every day. Brine production in just four Middle Eastern countries—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—accounts for more than half of this.
[...] "Brine underflows deplete dissolved oxygen in the receiving waters," said lead author Edward Jones, who worked at the institute and is now at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, in a press release. "High salinity and reduced dissolved oxygen levels can have profound impacts on benthic organisms, which can translate into ecological effects observable throughout the food chain."
Whatever happened to the idea of towing icebergs to where water was needed?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:04PM (3 children)
Indeed, and the author's description of "desalination plants globally produce enough brine ... in a year to cover all of Florida in nearly a foot of it. That's a lot of brine." is also indicitave of their ability to understand the scales involved.
Florida has a land area of about 170 000 km² so multiply by 1 foot and we get about 50 km³. The oceans are about a billion cubic kilometres; enough to cover all of Florida in an enormous spacescraper of seawater nearly six thousand km high! That's a lot of seawater. More than ten million times more than the paltry amount of brine which doesn't even reach knee height when spread out over Florida.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:30PM (2 children)
6,000 km would be quite high (IMHO), and raises a number of questions.
Would Florida be able to support the weight, or would it sink? Would it take any more land with it?
Would be able to just float stuff up to space? (assuming we could get past any pressure problems at what used to be called ground level).
Would there be a new tourist explosion to climb the highest peak in the world?
How far above Florida would we see goldfish?
Would James Cameron and Elon Musk be in favor of this development?
How long before we can't see anything inside because of toxic bloom?
Would the water at the top slosh?
Would the planet start wobbling?
How far away could you run a hose (with a showerhead on the end) so you could open a valve near the bottom, and simulate rain (perhaps over some country)? How heavy would the hose be, and would every country have to take it in turns to have rainy hours?
At least the whales will be able to stop worrying about those pesky Japanese and Norwegian ''scientists''.
I'm sure there are a number of other questions that might be considered at least equally important, but it would be nice to get some answers, instead of just more questions.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:57PM
Those are all excellent questions A/C, thanks.
I propose we put 6,000 km of water on Florida to answer them. In the name of science, of course.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @09:22PM
Its Florida. Who cares?