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A comment on Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water. Parent comment

Re:Desalination system could produce freshwater that is chea... by rconti on Thursday September 28, 2023 @02:08AM (#37685879)
Just talking out my ass here, but can't it be combined with, say, treated wastewater?

We're taking the salt out of the water in order to "drink" it, but the reality is that most of it gets used for irrigation or toilets or whatever, and eventually returned either as groundwater or to the ocean.

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Re:Desalination system could produce freshwater that is chea... by bruce511 on Thursday September 28, 2023 @02:21AM (#37685973)
In some cases, yes. I know we had a temp desalination running here for a while, and they just mixed the brine with sewerage outflow.

Obviously it depends on the location of the sewerage outflow relative to the location of the plant.

Of course this only matters at scale. For the suitcase sized device mentioned in the article the amount of brine generated is negligible.

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Re:Desalination system could produce freshwater that is chea... by foxyv on Friday September 29, 2023 @02:43PM (#37708508)
It may be better to just treat the waste water and skip the desalination in that case.
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