Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water::A new solar desalination system takes in saltwater and heats it with natural sunlight. The system flushes out accumulated salt, so replacement parts aren’t needed often, meaning the system could potentially produce drinking water that is cheaper than tap water.

  • Spaz@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Don’t tell Nestle this, they would store all the ocean water and resell it at a premium.

  • corship@feddit.de
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    9 months ago

    Nothing about this is “new”.

    Evaporating water and catching it has been the way to produce fresh water since, like ever. But it’s slow, and prone to bacteria.

      • sundrei@lemmy.sdf.org
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        9 months ago

        Apparently they solved the issue of how to keep the waste salt from clogging up the system.

        • corship@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          No they didn’t. It’s never been an issue. Just don’t evaporate all water and use a new batch of salt water before the previous one gets saturated. Availability of salt water usually isn’t the issue.

  • gnygnygny@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    The question with desalination is always the same what will you do with the salt ?

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      If it was just salt it wouldn’t be a problem. Salt is an essential nutrient and industrial product and we actually run seawater evaporators today specifically to farm the salt. We mine salt out of mountains and ship it around the world. Salt is our friend.

      The actual question is what to do with the concentrated salty sludge by products.

      • gnygnygny@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        French fries are already too salty. And then, people gonna need freshwater. Infinity loop.

  • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Evaporating water and condensing it has been done. We don’t use this method for desalination since it is more energy intensive (read expensive) than reverse osmosis, which itself is also quite energy intensive.

      • bruhduh@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        To produce systems energy would be needed too, and all “green” solutions have terrible EROI sometimes even negative, so… this solution have economically better alternatives that already in use