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A comment on Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020). Parent comment

Re:Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020) by ghshephard on Friday July 02, 2021 @05:05AM (#27709344)
Back of the envelope - say that you could get 7-8 hours of sunlight a day that could destill water. That would mean ~50 liters/day. ~20 Days to get 1m^3. Reverse Osmosis costs approx $0.50/m^3 water, so your payback on a $100 system would be ~200 * 20 Days or 4,000 Days to equal what you could get for spending $100 on buying water from a reverse osmosis system. The objective here isn't large scale economics, but self sufficiency.
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Re:Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020) by mianos on Friday July 02, 2021 @06:20AM (#27709795)
There are a lot of quite liveable islands that are deserted only due to lack of fresh water. This could change that.
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Re:Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020) by tonyhb on Friday July 02, 2021 @07:31AM (#27710156)
Or maybe we don't have to spread humans everywhere like a malignant cancer, leaving at least these Islands to nature.
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Re:Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020) by betwixthewires on Friday July 02, 2021 @07:44AM (#27710232)
Maybe don't spread your Malthusian bullshit like a malignant cancer. Some of us like being human.
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Re:Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020) by tonyhb on Friday July 02, 2021 @08:11AM (#27710425)
Hey, me too! Never said I didn't. Just that it's nice to leave some parts of the world to itself.
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Re:Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020) by civilized on Friday July 02, 2021 @10:16AM (#27711797)
>> malignant cancer

> it's nice

come on dude, have some self-awareness

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Re:Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020) by tonyhb on Friday July 02, 2021 @10:45AM (#27712171)
The only thing I was saying is - just because humans can live everywhere doesn't mean we need to.

If you look at any map of the modern world, there is almost nowhere that we haven't transformed into farmland, cities, etc, and it's pretty good (nice) that we have left the uninhabitable islands to nature. We've consumed most of the land, which is both pretty amazing and also quite bad for biodiversity, as everyone knows.

I'm not debating the "cancer" metaphor which is definitely harsh - it has been catastrophic for other life, but great for us. Maybe that wording can be less harsh, but IMO that's not the point.

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Re:Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020) by MauranKilom on Friday July 02, 2021 @06:12AM (#27709748)
Looking at a 10+ year time frame, I feel that maintenance cost would become the dominating factor. For both.
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Re:Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020) by jillesvangurp on Friday July 02, 2021 @07:03AM (#27709999)
I think the difference here is that the materials used are cheap and easy to procure. That sounds like maintenance should be straightforward. The difference between producing water locally and shipping/trucking it in is probably huge in places without water pipes. A couple of gallons a day goes a long way. Scale it up a little and now you are irrigating your vegetable garden as well.
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Re:Simple, solar-powered water desalination (2020) by ghshephard on Friday July 02, 2021 @01:23PM (#27714276)
The Reverse osmosis cost estimate was based on a 10 year committed Hyflux Desalination commercial contract with the PUB in Singapore (from about 5 years ago, so might be less expensive now, actaully) - so includes maintenance costs.

Regardless - this isn't a scale able solution, but doesn't need to be - should work fantastic for a small family with negligible environmental impact.

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