If this works, and scales, it could solve Cambria’s (and California’s, and many other places) water problem.
6 thoughts on “Solar Desalination”
Let’s hope it can scale without scale.
I’m not sure they’ve come up with more than an incrementally improved filter for a condensation process to desalination. It is really hard to tell, because what is shown at the link is only the filter aspect. You are not shown the evaporation or collection. The solar is explained by the black paint, but is the evaporation just solar heating? If so, then I question the $4 per family which sounds like $4 more for a filter besides all the other kit necessary to produce and collect evaporated water plus cost to obtain source material salt water.
This has the feel of “NASA invented a ventilator for Covid-19”, when all they actually did was build an already patented ventilator design which, if it really were cheaper and more effective (as suggested), probably would have made it to market without NASA to compete against all the other ventilators.
Sequestration of the salt is good to prevent, as David word plays previously, scale build up. That’s significant, but not so much the $4 per family hype.
Finally, as noted in the comments an Instapundit, the solution wouldn’t help Cambria or California because the objection to desalination isn’t cost but the unnatural imbalance caused by human conversion of salt water to fresh water. In short, the human condition is the objection, and anything humans due to the environment, such as living in it, is intolerable with the exception of calling yourself homeless and defecating on the concrete in public.
What are they going to do with the salt? Generally desalination ends up with an extremely salty outflow, almost a slurry, that is not ‘cost effective’ to process further. They pump it back into the sea tres horreur! and that sends the environmentalists into a tizzy because it is “wrecking the local” marine environment…
So, now what? Unless they can market the “all natural Cambrian Sea Salt™”…(?)
LOL
Sure, why not?
I mean why not? You’re getting two things people need: 1) Fresh water 2)Salt
Maybe you can pay the city employees in the salt. It worked for the Romans.
Drinking water for a family of four is what? Maybe eight gallons a day, tops. Enough to keep them from dying of thirst but not enough for livestock or crops.
Let’s hope it can scale without scale.
I’m not sure they’ve come up with more than an incrementally improved filter for a condensation process to desalination. It is really hard to tell, because what is shown at the link is only the filter aspect. You are not shown the evaporation or collection. The solar is explained by the black paint, but is the evaporation just solar heating? If so, then I question the $4 per family which sounds like $4 more for a filter besides all the other kit necessary to produce and collect evaporated water plus cost to obtain source material salt water.
This has the feel of “NASA invented a ventilator for Covid-19”, when all they actually did was build an already patented ventilator design which, if it really were cheaper and more effective (as suggested), probably would have made it to market without NASA to compete against all the other ventilators.
Sequestration of the salt is good to prevent, as David word plays previously, scale build up. That’s significant, but not so much the $4 per family hype.
Finally, as noted in the comments an Instapundit, the solution wouldn’t help Cambria or California because the objection to desalination isn’t cost but the unnatural imbalance caused by human conversion of salt water to fresh water. In short, the human condition is the objection, and anything humans due to the environment, such as living in it, is intolerable with the exception of calling yourself homeless and defecating on the concrete in public.
What are they going to do with the salt? Generally desalination ends up with an extremely salty outflow, almost a slurry, that is not ‘cost effective’ to process further. They pump it back into the sea tres horreur! and that sends the environmentalists into a tizzy because it is “wrecking the local” marine environment…
So, now what? Unless they can market the “all natural Cambrian Sea Salt™”…(?)
LOL
Sure, why not?
I mean why not? You’re getting two things people need: 1) Fresh water 2)Salt
Maybe you can pay the city employees in the salt. It worked for the Romans.
Drinking water for a family of four is what? Maybe eight gallons a day, tops. Enough to keep them from dying of thirst but not enough for livestock or crops.