News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Superefficient solar desalination (2020).

Re:Superefficient solar desalination (2020) by tuatoru on Thursday August 25, 2022 @06:05PM (#32600534)
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know the theoretical minimum energy required for desalination? Is it the energy released when salt is dissolved in water?

By analogy, Vaclav Smil says the best iron smelting and ammonia synthesis plants are within 100% of the theoretical minimum energy required for the chemical reactions to take place - within 50% in the case of the very best iron smelters. Aluminum smelting is slightly worse than these two IIRC.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Superefficient solar desalination (2020) by mota7 on Thursday August 25, 2022 @06:33PM (#32600809)
Minimum is around 1 kWh/m^3 for sea-water levels of salt concentration. (It varies a fair bit depending on salinity, the actual salts involved, the temperature etc etc).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Superefficient solar desalination (2020) by tuatoru on Friday August 26, 2022 @04:26AM (#32604655)
Thank you!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Superefficient solar desalination (2020) by zeristor on Saturday August 27, 2022 @04:15AM (#32616935)
Do you have a reference on Vaclav Smil?

I’d be interested in reading the book that discusses this sort of thing.

[ Parent | on HN ]