Desalinization Trivia
Probably not of interest to most of you, but I've always been interested in the idea of desalinization of ocean water as a way to meet water shortages. It's expensive, and I remember hearing years ago there's just no silver bullet to making it inexpensive, at least not yet.
One of my concerns was the byproducts of desalination, as for each gallon of useable water produced, one gallon of brine is left over- that brine being the salt and everything else taken out of the sea water. I would think it would pickle your eyes just by looking at it!
So, I'd heard off and on of a desalination project down in Southern California. It looks like one company is trying to go ahead with a desal project down there. I heard mention of it in an e-mail from my West Coast Libertarians Yahoo Group last night and had to ask: What about the effluent? Will it screw up the water for swimmers at the beach?
Norm Westwell, from Huntington Beach, responded with the following:
There will be a salinity increase, but it will be limited to an area of 300 feet about a quarter mile offshore. The salinity will be about what is experienced in Baja California, which has plenty of ocean life, so impact will be minimal.
And some salt trivia: If you took all the salt out of all the ocean water, worldwide, and spread it over the surface of the earth, you'd have a layer of salt 490 feet thick.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 9:41 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Desalinization of ocean water is the only way we can divert the inevitable water shortage waiting for the next generations. And it makes sense in a global warming scenario of rising sea water from polar cap melting.
The cost is prohibitive now but that's a short-sighted view in terms of the great importance of water in all our lives. Much more important than spending all the money we do on weapons of defense or subsidies to tobacco farmers. (Do we still do that?)
"Desalinization of ocean water is the only way we can divert the inevitable water shortage waiting for the next generations.".
I don't know about worldwide, but as far as California's concerned, seems to me we actually get enough water for all our current, and perhaps future needs. We just don't have the storage capacity. Think of all the floods we get. If we could just save all that water.
Yet people keep wanting to tear down the dams we do have, never mind make more of them.
"And it makes sense in a global warming scenario of rising sea water from polar cap melting.".
It's well known that I'm a global warming skeptic but, that aside, I'm skeptical of the rising water scenario.
If you get a glass of water and ice, the water level remains pretty much the same after the ice melts. If everything did melt, as global warming alarmist suggest, would the oceans be any different than a glass of ice water after the ice melts?
Ice displaces more volume than an equal amount of water so I assume more water evaporating, more ice melting would raise ocean levels.
Yes, Saudi Arabia gets the vast majority of their water from desalinating ocean water.
I spent four months over there back in '91 with the Army National Guard. You could see the desal plant of in the distance. All the water we drank, in bottles just like you buy at the store here, came from that plant.
I was told that the ocean water there was some of the saltiest in the world. Later on I came to realize it was probably because of the effluent from the desal plant.
But, the water was clear and had all kinds of fish in it. When we were working at the Port of Dammam, you could look off the docks and see all kinds of fish, big and small, in the water.
There was some rumor going around that if you fell into the water there you'd have to get like thirty some shots because the water was so dirty. Hard to swallow that (no pun intended) as the water was so clear and one of the guys in my squad got his scuba certificate while he was over there.
He never had to get any shots.
Post a Comment
<< Home