What's left to figure out is the ratio of panels to water to land, and in turn whether the long term value of the land is worth the investment. (Dubai would argue it is.)
Compared to the amount of water that is naturally desalinated every day (ie via evaporation), even large scale desalination is a drop in the bucket.
Desalination is already operating on a massive scale in the middle east, and we're not seeing any medium scale effects there. Elevated salinity dissipates very quickly from the point of outflow.
I've not seen any evidence supporting this is the case, but the opposite; large swathes of high-saline concentrated blobs sweeping accross the sealife, killing it. We've had to build specialized very long outflow pipes to give the brine even a change to level
While brine can impact local salinity, so does treated-effluent outflows (mixed together they are neutral.) Regardless elevated brine levels drop off sharply from the point of outflow.
If it's profitable, it'll be implemented all over, and underestimating that cumulative effect is something we would plead willful ignorance on as we have done with other industries in the past.
Second point I will try to make, habitats are often unique and small, we would just want to make sure an ecosystem is truly ubiquitous before destroying a small pocket of ecosystem.
Especially now, there are animals that live in just one or few specific spots. We should be careful.
That's because almost all the water that is taken out of the ocean will make its way back to the ocean. We just borrow it for a while.
If all the water used by humans were taken from the ocean, we'd take about 1/300000th of the ocean's water per year. Most of that will be back in the ocean within 200 years. That puts the cap on the amount of water that would be missing from the ocean of 1/1500th of its volume, which means that the steady state increase in salt concentration would be less than 0.1%, which is much less than the natural variation in ocean salt levels.
WRONG WRONG!!!
No, we used the brines to create even more batries which store our solar charge Now we have POWER at day and at NIGHT. 24/7. 247 we are producing the brines, but then that goes onto make more batries. Ain't no ecosystem destroyed here (though I'm sure people will try to perform a regression of muh bad event unto muh new technology because that is a timelessly vogue thing to do)
Btw touristic heaters are based on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_acetate and that's also energy storage
1) cheaper energy means you can mix more water in to get whatever salt level you want.
2) you can mix in the output of your sewage plants
3) most water is borrowed and returned, not a huge net loss. Every toilet full returns to the ocean, every washing machine run, etc.
Easy enough to add minerals/nutrients after the fact!
What kind of wattage was the device?
It was a peak ~700W device, and quite efficient for its price. It’d produce a few gallons overnight in summer in southern california when attached to a rather large battery.
Dehumidifier water in general isn't safe for consumption.
I meant acid rain and contaminated water probably lands on crops all the time.
Are you doing hydroponics or something? Because the soil has more minerals that you could ever possibly get from water. I mean the ground is where those minerals in regular water come from in the first place.
You also generate brine, you know, and that is its own environmental disaster that must be disposed of. In addition, maintenance of facilities in contact with salt water is murderously labor intensive.
Desalinization is economically useful up until you provide everybody with drinking water. Once you pass that point, desalinization is way, way, way less useful.
Most people so far don't comprehend the kind of huge change free/extremely cheap electricity would bring to the world. We have the tech to do a lot of stuff but it is not cost effective cheap electricity will change that.
Apparently seawater has 3.5% salinity. So desalinating enough to water crops/supply cities leaves you with a lot of salt.
Metals that can be extracted from seawater include:
Sodium (Na): One of the most common metals found in seawater, sodium can be extracted through solar evaporation or electrolysis.
Magnesium (Mg): A metal that can be extracted from seawater.
Calcium (Ca): A metal that can be extracted from seawater.
Potassium (K): A metal that can be extracted from seawater.
Lithium: A metal that may become more important in the future as demand for lithium batteries and fusion energy increases.
Copper: A high-value metal that is often present in seawater.
Nickel: A high-value metal that is often present in seawater.
Cobalt: A high-value metal that is often present in seawater.
The idea is that our salt would cover part of the salt dome, preventing that part of the salt dome from providing salt to the water. Instead, the salt that would have come from that part of the dome comes from our salt.
Take the Carlsbad plant in San Diego. It cost $1 billion to build, and it produces about 200k tons of fresh water per day. Let's say you build a similar plant and to finance the build you use municipal bonds that have a yield of 3.6% (the current level for 30 year muni bonds). That's 0.30% per month, or 0.01% per day. So only the interest on these bonds is $100k per day, which is 50 cents per ton of fresh water. According to wikipedia, it takes about 0.3 kWh to desalinate 1 ton of water [2]. In my state (NY) the average cost of electricity for industry consumers was about 7 cents for 2023 [3], so that would mean 21 cents per ton of water. If that cost goes to zero, you save 21 cents for each ton of water. But if you reduce the plant utilization from 100% to 25%, you increase the interest cost by 150 cents.
In order for desalination to be a useful target for peak electricity consumption, we need to find ways to massively reduce the capital cost of building desal plants. By "massively", I mean a factor of 10 or more. Is it possible? Yes. Is it guaranteed? No.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsba...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
[3] https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/Energy-Prices/Electricity/Monthly...