Sunday, September 11, 2022

2 Breakthroughs That Could Solve the Fresh Water Crisis


Start watching at 4:52 - these two small-scale water-harvesting innovations stand apart in being much cheaper and less energy-intensive than existing solutions, making them perfect for third world needs.

 The first one needs a mere 20 watts* to generate a liter, the second one requires an expensive polymer but no power to capture atmospheric humidity even in arid environments.  

 Questions remain about how long the equipment will run without maintenance (the ion-based system can reverse polarity to self-clean) and the ecological effects (11:32) of brine discharge. 

The amount of brine discharged by (much larger) conventional industrial-scale reverse-osmosis desalination plants will decimate marine life within some dilution radius, even if it's discharged deep in the ocean. In Saudi Arabia, 
"the average desalination plant actually produced...  51.8 billion cubic meters of brine each year, which Qadir says is enough to cover all of Florida, a foot deep." https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/desalination-plants-produce-twice-as-much-waste-brine-as-thought
I also didn't realize the discharge contains copper and chlorine, added to sterilize the water and prevent corrosion. However, the article quotes another expert who feels such ecological impacts are overblown. 

In the end, I think such ecological impact will become a price society will have to pay as water scarcity looms closer. 

*I thought this was a small energy usage, but it turns out that large-scale reverse-osmosis desalination plants use 3.8 watts per gallon, or less than a watt per liter, which really surprises me.

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