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Desalination pours more toxic brine into the ocean than previously thought
Technology meant to help solve the world's growing water shortage is producing a salty environmental dilemma.
Desalination facilities, which extract drinkable water from the ocean, discharge around 142 billion liters of extremely salty water called brine back into the environment every day, a study finds. That waste product of the desalination process can kill marine life and detrimentally alter the planet's oceans, researchers report January 14 in Science of the Total Environment.
"On the one hand, we are trying to provide populations — particularly in dry areas — with the needed amount of good quality water. But at the same time, we are also adding an environmental concern to the process," says study coauthor Manzoor Qadir, an environmental scientist at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health in Hamilton, Canada.
I would take some salt, but it probably contains microplastics.
The state of desalination and brine production: A global outlook (DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.12.076) (DX)
(Score: 4, Informative) by qzm on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:03AM (7 children)
Removing fresh water from salt water makes the remaining water more salty.
Shocking! Who would have guessed!
I am pleased researches managed to discover this for us, I had always assumed that the only byproducts were rainbows and unicorns.
Now, for a moment of reality.
The oceans contain around 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters of water.
They are claiming people are dumping 142,000,000,000 liters of 'extreemely salty' water per day
Given some simple rounding, thats 1/10,000,000,000th of the oceans per day (anyone find that a little unlikely? I sure as hell do..)
So, if they did that for 100 years (3600 days) that would be 1/30,000th of the ocean.
Assuming the brine was 10 times as salty as the existing sea water (from what I read its usually less than double) thats 1/3000th increase in salinity approximately.
so, after 100 years they would increase the salinity by 0.04% or so.
Shocked I tell you, shocked.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:23AM (4 children)
You missed an assumption. That the water taken out never goes back.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:08AM (2 children)
Where does it go? Into outer space?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:48AM
everbody knows that water can only return SALTY to the ocean because we PEE it out and there's salt in PEE!
the rain you see is acctually water vapor falling from mars on earth. there's less and less water on mars everyday!
soon, with all the PEEing, earth will turn into a lump of SALT!
the only good part is that planet SALT will attract SPACE COWS that living in between planets to give it a good lick!
(Score: 2) by Rich26189 on Sunday January 20 2019, @02:25PM
No, it's stored in ugly bags of water.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nuke on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:49AM
So the water never goes back? What are they doing with it, making gold out of it?
What is missing is that this is a local problem with increased local salinity, not global.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:30AM (1 child)
I agree with everything you said, this is tempest-in-teapot level bullshit from a long-term point of view.
However, framing it in whole-ocean terms glosses over the fact that at the point of entry, high levels of brine are going to devastate whatever happens to be living in that water. Dilution takes time.
Or, to put it another way: Stipulate that a beach bonfire raises the global temperature by 1e-39 kelvins and you probably won't give a shit... unless it's your ass that happens to be in the bonfire as it burns.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:00PM
Personally, I'm of the opinion that minimal temporary damage to a local habitat is acceptable when it doesn't cause permanent plant-scale damage.
Every time we cut down trees to make room for a new subdivision, we are causing destruction of a local habitat. The damage isn't permanent, animals can move somewhere else, as long as a sufficient amount of barrier forest is in the area. But some area (where we put buildings) is no longer suitable for wildlife. I'd think of this salinification of the ocean coast the same way. Temporary localized removal of an animal habitat that would be restored if humans decided to move out.
Granted, some fish might die, but the same can be said of each incident where you go fishing and decide to cook the catch. This is just part of nature, and unless it presents a threat to the overall ecosystem we are best not worrying too much about it.
The Government is a Bird