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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @12:16AM (3 children)
You should take a chemistry class. The water cycle isn't going to remove salt/brine that's already laying stuck on the lower levels of the oceans. The level will gradually rise as more shit is added. It may take a long long time, but it'll happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @02:52AM (1 child)
Example... The Salton Sea was once a freshwater lake. Now it's toxic.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday January 18 2019, @04:05PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 17 2019, @02:55AM
I suspect what is being said here is that water extracted from the ocean will return to the ocean.
Perhaps after being blended,brewed,filted by kidneys,bleached,chlorinated.