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A comment on A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US Southwest. Parent comment

Re:A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US ... by JohnMakin on Friday January 12, 2024 @11:40AM (#38970264)
He addresses brine, but not the waste products that come from brine, and only addresses it in one sentence:

> The resulting depleted brine is piped back to the ocean where it is thoroughly mixed with sea water and discharged.

This is not nearly as easy as this sentence implies.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US ... by konschubert on Friday January 12, 2024 @12:46PM (#38971320)
Brine is just concentrated seawater. What waste products?
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Re:A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US ... by digging on Friday January 12, 2024 @01:15PM (#38971720)
The waste product is brine. It's an extremely salty sludge that's toxic to marine life. In the same way that fresh water is "just" diluted seawater, but pumping millions of gallons of it into a coastal ecosystem would wipe it out.
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Re:A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US ... by photonbucket on Friday January 12, 2024 @02:39PM (#38972890)
The pipe should really go a dozen miles out to sea and then get pump-mixed with the destination water
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Re:A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US ... by tuatoru on Friday January 12, 2024 @02:59PM (#38973163)
Yes it is. We do it with urban wastewater in thousands of locations around the world. This is not a hard problem, nor is it expensive.
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Re:A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US ... by hnmullany on Friday January 12, 2024 @04:51PM (#38974625)
Waste brine is substantially more dense than regular seawater, so it tends to form a coherent layer that doesn't mix easily: it's why waste brine sinks to the sea-bed and spreads out in a layer.
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Re:A vision for the alleviation of water scarcity in the US ... by tuatoru on Saturday January 13, 2024 @05:09PM (#38985129)
Diffusers are a thing. Fairly well understood.
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