I expect desalination plants will become more common in those coastal areas affected by persistent droughts, California has 17 desalination plants in the works, either partially constructed or through exploration and planning phases. The list of locations includes Bay Point, in the Delta, Redwood City, seven in the Santa Cruz / Monterey Bay, Cambria, Oceaneo, Redondo Beach, Huntington Beach, Dana Point, Camp Pendleton, Oceanside and Carlsbad.
I’m not advocating anything regarding salt. If you’re going to use salt, may as well use salt that contains micro nutrients. And you shouldn’t really totally eliminate salt from your diet.
I’m just pointing out that sea salt that may result from desalination can be sold for big bucks.
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“I’m just pointing out that sea salt that may result from desalination can be sold for big bucks”.
No. Maybe you’ll understand better when you get to chemistry and physics in high school, but the “salt” that comes from desalination is in the form of brine—they only take a percentage of the “water” out of the “sea water” and dump the then-saltier remnant back into the ocean (where it is toxic and has to be released with care).
The way sea salt is obtained is by simply evaporating sea water in large shallow ponds with solar energy—-cheap and easy compared to trying to carry desalination to the point of actually producing “sea salt”.
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No the 17 are all conventional oil and gas powered as only a few people seem to acknowledge the harm caused by the physics of using the atmosphere as a commons dump.
Hitachi can provide solar powered plants, which are beginning to be deployed in the U.A.E and in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
Why Schwarzenegger didn’t insist on solar plants when they were first commissioned defeats me. Just more reliance on fossil fuels to get us out of a problem that is exasperated by fossil fuel produced CO2 and methane trace gases.
I find it extremely frustrating that we are just continuing as if everything if hunky-dory, like a lemming in a stampede heading for a cliff. (I know that is a fallacy, but the best comparison I can think of).
The largest Californian desalination plant (powered by oil and gas – expected completion 2016) is located at Carlsbad and will provide 50 million gallons of fresh drinking water daily.
Utico Middle East is planning to construct what is believed to be the world’s largest solar-powered seawater desalination plant in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE.
After completion, the desalination plant is expected to generate 22 million gallons of water a day and 20MW of solar power.
I must admit when I lived in Abu Dhabi the desalinated tap water was not very tempting, being warm to hot and having a strange paraffin-like after-taste, so I kept to bottled spring water. Abu Dhabi exists in permanent drought conditions with some completely rainless years.
The desalination plant typically uses three kilograms of seawater to produce 1 kilogram of fresh water. The extracted salt dissolves in the excess sea water used in the process to form so-called brine. The brine is generally returned to the sea where it is diluted again in its natural medium.
Can salt be recovered?
The most common recycled use for brine waste is saltcrete, which is put into an asphalt mixture for making roads. At Tampa bay’s desalination plant station the brine is mixed back with water and is used as a cooling agent to an adjacent power station, before being returned to the bay.
The usual desalination processes do not provide for such recovery. Whereas they concentrate seawater 1.5 times, recovery of salt would require seawater to be concentrated ten times. Under such conditions the first crystals would appear in the brine. This would require a lot of energy and cannot be justified on an economic standpoint. Today whenever a large surface area is available close to a sunny seashore, salt pans, which make use of solar energy, are still the best method of salt production.
Redskylite—-thank you for all that information on desalination and brine/salt. I myself was aware of all of that because I had done some study on both desalination and salt production (the latter when Mitsubishi planned to threaten the Gray whale’s nursery areas in Baja withe the world’s largest salt plant), but others perhaps may benefit from it.
I was really just playing the devils’s advocate by asking “Are they solar-powered? What do they plan to do with the salt after they remove it?”. My point was that desalination is a “last straw” proposition—-unless solar-powered, it has a significant carbon footprint, produces waste, the water tastes crappy, and the beaches will become rather unappealing when desalination plants are lined up shoulder to shoulder along them.
Desalination may be necessary in Abu Dhabi, but it is really just another technological “fix” that grows from man’s increasing inability to “fit” into the biosphere in a “natural” way. Too many of us, and too many living in places where we shouldn’t be (and therefore being forced to “bend” nature to suit us).
I expect desalination plants will become more common in those coastal areas affected by persistent droughts, California has 17 desalination plants in the works, either partially constructed or through exploration and planning phases. The list of locations includes Bay Point, in the Delta, Redwood City, seven in the Santa Cruz / Monterey Bay, Cambria, Oceaneo, Redondo Beach, Huntington Beach, Dana Point, Camp Pendleton, Oceanside and Carlsbad.
Are they solar-powered? What do they plan to do with the salt after they remove it?
Probably sell it. There’s a specialty market for sea salt.
That’s almost funny.
Funny why? Food faddists promote eating sea salt.
http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/articles/salt3.php
And that IS funny, because cardiologists say eat less salt, whether it’s cheap or expensive.
Are you really advocating that a “responsible” way to get of the waste salt from desalination is to get people to use more of it on their food? LOL
Here’s more. Sea salt isn’t cheap.
http://www.sfbsc.com/sea-salt
I’m not advocating anything regarding salt. If you’re going to use salt, may as well use salt that contains micro nutrients. And you shouldn’t really totally eliminate salt from your diet.
I’m just pointing out that sea salt that may result from desalination can be sold for big bucks.
“I’m just pointing out that sea salt that may result from desalination can be sold for big bucks”.
No. Maybe you’ll understand better when you get to chemistry and physics in high school, but the “salt” that comes from desalination is in the form of brine—they only take a percentage of the “water” out of the “sea water” and dump the then-saltier remnant back into the ocean (where it is toxic and has to be released with care).
The way sea salt is obtained is by simply evaporating sea water in large shallow ponds with solar energy—-cheap and easy compared to trying to carry desalination to the point of actually producing “sea salt”.
No the 17 are all conventional oil and gas powered as only a few people seem to acknowledge the harm caused by the physics of using the atmosphere as a commons dump.
Hitachi can provide solar powered plants, which are beginning to be deployed in the U.A.E and in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
Why Schwarzenegger didn’t insist on solar plants when they were first commissioned defeats me. Just more reliance on fossil fuels to get us out of a problem that is exasperated by fossil fuel produced CO2 and methane trace gases.
I find it extremely frustrating that we are just continuing as if everything if hunky-dory, like a lemming in a stampede heading for a cliff. (I know that is a fallacy, but the best comparison I can think of).
http://www.hitachi.com/environment/showcase/solution/industrial/desalination_plant.html
The largest Californian desalination plant (powered by oil and gas – expected completion 2016) is located at Carlsbad and will provide 50 million gallons of fresh drinking water daily.
http://www.haaretz.com/business/1.575985
Utico Middle East is planning to construct what is believed to be the world’s largest solar-powered seawater desalination plant in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE.
After completion, the desalination plant is expected to generate 22 million gallons of water a day and 20MW of solar power.
http://www.water-technology.net/news/news-utico-to-build-worlds-largest-solar-powered-seawater-desalination-plant-in-uae
I must admit when I lived in Abu Dhabi the desalinated tap water was not very tempting, being warm to hot and having a strange paraffin-like after-taste, so I kept to bottled spring water. Abu Dhabi exists in permanent drought conditions with some completely rainless years.
The desalination plant typically uses three kilograms of seawater to produce 1 kilogram of fresh water. The extracted salt dissolves in the excess sea water used in the process to form so-called brine. The brine is generally returned to the sea where it is diluted again in its natural medium.
Can salt be recovered?
The most common recycled use for brine waste is saltcrete, which is put into an asphalt mixture for making roads. At Tampa bay’s desalination plant station the brine is mixed back with water and is used as a cooling agent to an adjacent power station, before being returned to the bay.
The usual desalination processes do not provide for such recovery. Whereas they concentrate seawater 1.5 times, recovery of salt would require seawater to be concentrated ten times. Under such conditions the first crystals would appear in the brine. This would require a lot of energy and cannot be justified on an economic standpoint. Today whenever a large surface area is available close to a sunny seashore, salt pans, which make use of solar energy, are still the best method of salt production.
Redskylite—-thank you for all that information on desalination and brine/salt. I myself was aware of all of that because I had done some study on both desalination and salt production (the latter when Mitsubishi planned to threaten the Gray whale’s nursery areas in Baja withe the world’s largest salt plant), but others perhaps may benefit from it.
I was really just playing the devils’s advocate by asking “Are they solar-powered? What do they plan to do with the salt after they remove it?”. My point was that desalination is a “last straw” proposition—-unless solar-powered, it has a significant carbon footprint, produces waste, the water tastes crappy, and the beaches will become rather unappealing when desalination plants are lined up shoulder to shoulder along them.
Desalination may be necessary in Abu Dhabi, but it is really just another technological “fix” that grows from man’s increasing inability to “fit” into the biosphere in a “natural” way. Too many of us, and too many living in places where we shouldn’t be (and therefore being forced to “bend” nature to suit us).