Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Wednesday January 16 2019, @02:28PM   Printer-friendly
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?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by slinches on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:37PM

    by slinches (5049) on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:37PM (#787541)

    Do you know how much water is in the oceans? It's effectively infinite. To desalinate all of it to the point that you increased the average salt content by 1% you'd have ~1.5 billion liters of fresh water for each person on the planet.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4