New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without waste

Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by ashdksnndck on Friday June 05, 2026 @06:52PM (#48419379)

If you use fat pipes that go a decent distance from shore, diluting your brine with ocean water, you’ll have a negligible impact on the ocean. The problem is if you dump lots of brine in shallow waters. Old designs did have that flaw, but it’s not that difficult to design around this constraint now that we know about it.

IMO this is an issue where NIMBYs are using environmental concerns as a smokescreen to block new desal plants from ruining the vibe at their beachfront property. Rhymes with the opposition against offshore wind farms.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by FartyMcFarter on Friday June 05, 2026 @11:20PM (#48421064)

Yeah. Worrying about salt in the sea is like worrying about oxygen in the air. Can too much oxygen in the air sometimes be a problem? Yeah, in some corner cases. Is it a major problem that we can't solve? Not at all.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by mejutoco on Saturday June 06, 2026 @02:17AM (#48421934)

That makes sense to me. At the same time I know the mediterranean sea is heating up more because it cannot move heat out quick enough. I dont know of any mediterranean air, so I believe more closed water zones would behave different than, lets say, the atlantic ocean.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by 0xFF0123 on Saturday June 06, 2026 @04:31AM (#48422722)

Isn't it more akin in this case to worrying about too much carbon dioxide in the air?

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by FartyMcFarter on Saturday June 06, 2026 @04:38AM (#48422765)

Why is it akin to that? Doesn't the salt come from the sea in the first place?

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by ceejayoz on Saturday June 06, 2026 @07:45AM (#48423985)

A more apt comparison than you realize.

Most of the carbon we spew into the atmosphere came from the air. Ancient plants took it in via respiration.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by FartyMcFarter on Saturday June 06, 2026 @08:14AM (#48424236)

That still doesn't make it a good comparison. The salt emitted by desalination plants is already in the sea now, it's not salt that went somewhere else.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by parineum on Saturday June 06, 2026 @11:02AM (#48425755)

And the water we take out eventually goes back.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by xp84 on Saturday June 06, 2026 @12:49AM (#48421484)

I can probably be convinced pretty easily with some evidence of that, but you’ll never convince the contingent who is convinced it’ll kill sea life at any concentration or location, so, being able to shut them up by saying “we have no wastewater, we load rail cars with crunchy salt and use it for stuff” still has value.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by kortilla on Saturday June 06, 2026 @03:09AM (#48422248)

The goalposts will just shift to attack that excess salt instead. It’s like all of the FUD about datacenter water usage while people shove almonds in their mouths.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by nkmnz on Saturday June 06, 2026 @07:17AM (#48423803)

In Germany, it's the water usage of a Tesla plant vs. the neighboring asparagus farm.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by __MatrixMan__ on Saturday June 06, 2026 @12:02PM (#48426281)

I wish we could reimagine carbon credits to that degree of stringency. You offset a kg of carbon emissions? Let's see that kg.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by Someone on Saturday June 06, 2026 @03:05AM (#48422216)

> The problem is if you dump lots of brine in shallow waters. Old designs did have that flaw, but it’s not that difficult to design around this constraint now that we know about it.

I think that problem was known (and discarded as not important) when the first serious water desalination plants were built.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by iamjs on Saturday June 06, 2026 @09:58AM (#48425225)

The city of Corpus Christi, TX is currently considering options for desalination plants—all of which pump their brine into the shallow water inside the bay or the ship channel.

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Re:New method turns ocean water into drinking water, without... by senordevnyc on Saturday June 06, 2026 @02:58PM (#48427852)

Sounds on brand for Texas.

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