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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Clump it into a big ball and send to space!