How Nanotech Can Help Solve the Fresh Water Crisis
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 มิ.ย. 2024
- Exploring Groundbreaking Nanotech for the Fresh Water Crisis? Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/undecided and enter promo code UNDECIDED for 83% off and 4 extra months for free! We all take freshwater for granted, but we shouldn't. By 2025 two thirds of the global population may experience water scarcity, so there's a fresh water crisis coming. And that’s because of global warming driven droughts. Supply cuts are looming in the Southwestern US and water is fueling wars across the world. There’s a sea of desalination technologies coming up. Like solar domes in the desert or nanofiber technology membranes and other nanomaterials making seawater drinkable in minutes. Let's take a look at how nanotechnology could help contain the fresh water crisis and help with sustainability.
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Time for me to bring up permaculture again! With proper earth works and land management, permaculture can water its crops with minimal irrigation by storing the water that falls onto the soil instead of letting it run off. By slowing and spreading the water, it allows it to penetrate deep into the ground which recharges the water table and aquifers.
I can keep going on about this if anyone is interested.
👍Agreed. Solving the water issue isn't going to be just one thing, but a combination of things. Permaculture is a good one.
You don't need to talk about it. We havve Geoff Lawton
Agreed, PaleGhost. Something I've advocated for for a long time now. Changing our food production methods, along with changes in urban/suburban zoning, substantial support for mass transportation, and significant reductions in military equipment, can have tremendous effects on climate change and water scarcity - the two being linked as Matt demonstrates.
Salts will collect there over time.
@@UndecidedMF only if you have enough rainfall to start with.
The waste product “Brine” you mentioned is just the saltier water remaining behind after the fresh water is removed. Example you have 20 gallons of typical sea water with a salt content of 3.5%. Using reverse osmosis, regular distillation, or the membrane distillation you mentioned; you remove 10 gallons of fresh water. That means you are left with 10 gallons of 7.0% brine solution. It doesn’t matter how you remove the fresh water. You are always left with the increased salinity “brine” solution.
So the new membrane distillation may or may not be more energy efficient but, from the information you provided it definitely doesn’t reduce the brine waste problem.
Of course the easiest way to fix the brine waste problem in a desert desalination plant would be to pump it into a big basin and allow the rest of the water to evaporate. The salt would build up and the world would have a future salt dome. A small amount of the salt could be sold for use as used for rock salt.
They could cargo the brine solution and sell it to other manufacturing industries like for food or chemical
Ed That depends on what you do with the brine, if you store it on land the water evaporates and leaves the salt and other minerals behind. The question now is how can this be broken down further, Those 'other minerals' can be separated and used depending on what they are.
@@Eric-ye5yz - the remaining salt will become future “gold mines”, for elements like lithium.
Evaporated water will also help to add water to the local ecology, in the air.
Fresh water should be diverted from the Mississippi, when it hits flood stage, to the south west, occasionally pumped up hills using solar panels & wind turbine & Lithium Titanium batteries… in a once a generation infrastructure build.
There is no reason why the South West must be dry. The issue is lack of vision.
The brine should contain a remarkable number of dissolved minerals in addition to salt. Rather than treating it as a waste product, they should treat it as a resource.
There are varieties of grass that will grow with very salty irrigation. See S.Spain. and some of their Golf Courses.
Could a grass be adapted to extract salts from water rendering it less salty ?????.
25 years ago, I worked in an aerospace group. We designed a desalinationsystem for central California.The design looked at financial, ecological, and future needs for this geographical part of California. The design goal was to produce fresh water and electrical power for central/coastal areas using solar desalination methodology. This every so wise politicians determined that there was no need for such a project. This was and just months before the major drought began which continues even today. Arizona is now thinking about doing just this, but it is getting late. My lead engineer on this retired and died soon after his presenting this plan to the California state water management people. and so his plans have retired as well. Climate Change has become the big money dump for America, but so far no Mitigation Plans seem to be offered. It's time for this generation of engineers and scientists to offe mitigation ideas for consideration using many of the new capabilities already developed. My suggestion is: Congres submit Requests for proposals (RFP's) for water management systems for America. This could also be funded like Elon Musk's SpaceX program via Privately and US Budget appropriations. The economy can't grow if there is no place to go into. Water is the life blood of growth for all states and countries.
Thanks for your reply. ¿Can you recover the documents and fight for this project? The tecnical world is full of excellent projects and ideas shot-down by stupid politicians (whose main drive is ambition, not well being for humanity) all over the world. But devloping ideas needs champions. If you can get the study data I would be pleased to read and use it!! My small company (only 2 scientists on board) was created to develop engineering solutions in 1987 and we are getting there, having reached low-cost and clean industrial metal production from minerals up to indsutrial pilot scale level (which cost about US $900K in 2018. Please let me know if you can send the information. Thanks. J. Arias, Ph. D. in Geochemistry
just bring water from Oregon, cheaper
Is your engineer friend died of natural death or was deliberately killled by greesy souless investors/corrupt politician/s thru accidental scenario or by poisoning to prevent his ideas to materialize into action thus affecting their very lucrative business on water.
By my amateur calculations feeding the farms would require about 36 billion gallons per day, or something more than one thousand typical desalination plants, and produce about 25 billion pounds of salt per day. It would cost something around a trillion dollars.
What did you come up with?
@@cliffordschaffer5289 Isreal has managed to overcome this and successfully mitigated using Desal plants. Maybe look to those who are making it work.
-Important Question
Hi Matt, long time watcher, electrical and nanotechnology engineer here, I was thinking about a design, which is basically a Nuclear Reactor, working between sodium coolant and water coolant principles, say the sea water is cooling the first reactor, the steam emission from the turbine is then can be condensated instead of being released into atmosphere, the leftover steam could produce fresh water for use. Be it with single reactor design, or two-stage, that could revolutionize way we produce our needs. Both energy and desalination could be done in one struct, instead of using electrical power to run the desalination, we could simply use the excess heat from the reactor.
This idea has a lot of space left to develop. I know you can add few interesting things to it and spread the idea better than me.
THANK YOU SO MUCH
i would love to hear more about that
Any new technology that desalinates water safely is going to be an important part of the future. But one thing, desalinating water is not that energy intensive where the water is to be directly use by people. For basic desalination (without extended purification processes) it takes about 3 watt hours per litre to desalinate. Think of that in terms of a household rooftop solar. For people living on boats generating their water for their own use the energy consumption is under 5b watt hours per litre. For me living on a boat I consume about 270 liters per week with an energy cost of 1.35 KWhrs per week. I have 1 kw capacity solar panels as well as a wind generator. Food production on the other hand might be an interesting calculation.
how large is the area you are living on and how many people does it supply?
because i suspect that approach will not scale to sufficient population density for the majority of the population
though utilizing solar and wind to power larger desalination plants - especially in very arid areas with high temperatures, so evaporation through heat can also be used, might be fairly effective uses
and utilizing something like a greenhouse dome for this might also allow to capture the evaporated water for use
@@SharienGaming No. 3 Wh per litre is nothing, and scales really really well. In the UK, daily energy consumption per capita is 12600 Wh. Heck, in Nigeria it's still 410 Wh per person per day. Adding another 6 Wh for 2 litres of drinking water is a rounding error.
Just lowering air pressure drastically improves energy efficiency in boiling water for purification.
@@SharienGaming I live on a 45 ft boat alone. My 270 liters per week is for 1 person, but I take a 15 minute shower every day from that 270 liters. I don’t have a desalinator aboard yet, but the one I will get produces 50 liters per hour at about 4.5 watts per litre. The Nano tech filters should improve on that considerably. The nano tech units will also make waste water discharge more environmentally friendly so I will be able to live in enclosed waters without using shore facilities at all.
Plus pumping the waste brine a sufficient distant out from shore, plus pumping the water into the grid, plus replacing the filters and membranes on a regular basis, plus staffing costs. The average cost of desalinated seawater in Australia is $5-$10/ kilo litre. This means every flush of a standard toilet would cost 1.5 cents to 3cents for an efficient system and more for older systems. It adds up quickly.
I have lived “off grid” for a number of years on my 44’ sailboat. I use a Spectra de-salinization “watermaker”. It is RO BUT. Uses a recovery engineered pump to greatly reduce the energy costs. I make roughly a gallon of water per 1 amp at 12 volt. I make 8-10 gallons per hour from my small solar panels. As we are conservative on water use, we only need to run it an hr or two a day. That’s around a hundred or two watts per day!! I do not know how this technology scales up but works great for us. Off course this does not eliminate the brine issue. We are a tiny drop in the bucket. As we are usually in open water, not a harbor. A newer more efficient membrane would be wonderful.
This is amazing, do you think you'll ever "move back"? I think it's a great way to live.
@@ayawoke9906 It was a wonderful live style. But no, age is something that eventually gets us all. Ha ha.
@@fredread9216 I’m glad you where able to experience such a cool thing. He well, greetings from Phoenix Arizona
@@ayawoke9906 Thanks!
Regarding 7:28, RO filtration producing 2 parts brine for ea part of fresh. Seawater is 3.5% salt. 100 lbs seawater contains 3.5 lbs salt. The 2 parts, 67 lbs, then contain the 3.5 lbs salt, a 5.22% salt concentration.
If those 2 parts of 5.22% "brine" are disposed into normal fresh runoff channels, where the 1 part fresh will eventually go, the ocean's salt content will remain the same and not necessarily have harmful high concentration areas.
Another up and coming tech I learned about recently is capacitive deionization. It uses electrostatic charges to remove ions from water, is more energy efficient than reverse osmosis, produces less brine byproduct which would make it more economical to concentrate into a solid form to be disposed of or applied to some process which requires salts.
Re-mining lithium in the Atacama desert, I would think that using the solar mirrors and greenhouse dome to surround the brine water would increase the rate of evaporation and allow the lithium to be obtained faster. At the same time, if there were collectors in the dome that were cool so that water vapor would condense on them and then if it were channeled out of the dome, the same system could produce freshwater as well as lithium.
the dome could also slightly be evacuated so the evaporation temperature is lower
@@Humbulla93 Seems like a good idea but unless you wanted to attach a running vacuum pump (which would also tend to evacuate the water as well), the dome would quickly leak up from both the water vapor and ambient leakage into the dome. Making a dome that size that seals well enough would also be a challenge. It would probably turn out to be not worth the effort. I've got sunshine and time for free.
I understand "seal" and "leak" are relative terms but I think trying to pump down the dome to much of a meaningful pressure difference would turn out to be too problematic (and expensive).
It's crazy seeing all that water evaporated into the atmosphere during lithium mining and purification. We have to find a less water intensive method to feed the world's growing EV's appetite. Perhaps using solid state super-caps based on graphene which doesn't require crazy amounts of water and other scarce materials and resources.
Hi there, long fan of the channel.
On the 1kg Meat = 510L of Water, it's true but 94% of cow's water consumption comes from rainwater.
If you contrast this with crop irrigation that takes around 70% of the world’s freshwater it paints a different picture.
The worst offender is rice with around 4,000 - 5,000 litres of water per kg
Sooo it never rains on rice paddies?
@@marcsimmonds7814 depends of where you grow it, the ideal weather for rice is mooson as it requires to be submerged in water. So if you are in some regions of asia you can fully rely on rainwater.
@@marcsimmonds7814 recently there are also farmers who are switching to dripping instead of using dig.
This way consumes less water (1500l/kg) but it relies a lot more on irrigation
But cows in rich countries usually eat irrigated crops, not grass.
@@Moses_VII it's not a poor country/rich country divide. It's a weather divide. In France, Uk, switzerland and other green countries, grass is plentiful and the need for irrigated crops is much lower if not nonexistent. In arid regions like Southern America (Arizona, New Mexica, California, Nevada, etc.), that's another story.
Some of the sodium-chloride salt can be sealed into big panels encased in strengthened glass _(by chemical tempering, such as with doping the glass with potassium for the ions, and other elements instead)_ and so this forms a reasonably strong building material _(for some limited purposes)_ which can shade ground _(and sometimes be used in the sea)._ That "salt-glass" building material _(e.g. cuboidal or interlocking shapes instead)_ can shade the ground of land _(including deserts)_ so as to lower the ground's temperature and increase the probably of rain on account of the fact that the cooler surface wil mean the rain is less likely to evaporate before hitting the surface. Canals can be made (partly) from lining made from such building-material so as to move saltwater. The salt does not react with the brine and that is because it is encased in glass _(chemically-tempered glass, as has been mentioned here)._ The colour of the glass can also be customised via doping so as to change the wavelength of the light reflecting or absorbed via the energy gap _(effective nuclear charge),_ and there are various usage scenarios for that such as how plants react differently to different colour light or intensity. Heat can also be stored thusly as a form of "battery" of energy _(photons as heat)._ This comment is to help.
My comment has no hate in it and I do no harm. I am not appalled or afraid, boasting or envying or complaining... Just saying. Psalms23: Giving thanks and praise to the Lord and peace and love.
Israel does more de-sal than anyone. They deal with all these issues smartly; And the brine is not a problem for them either, it can be pushed to evaporation ponds for salt production, or, brine is only a degree "saltier" than the ocean water it comes from, it is simply pushed out to sea where it reaches equilibrium. But I love love love the idea of building materials very nicely done. Good vibes ;)
Sewerage treatment plants discharge water that is perfectly good enough for irrigation. In some parts of the World there are two water supplies - one is drinking water, and the other is treated sewerage water used for watering gardens and fields, and can also be used for washing cars etc. The treated sewerage water is also safe enough to drink (I have done so on several occasions by drinking from a garden tap (faucet) that I was unaware was connected to the treated sewerage supply).
Some 20 years ago I heard for the first time that Israel uses droplet irrigation as a means to save water and even export it. As amazing as this technologies being develop genuinely is, reducing consumption by widespread adoption of technologies with literal decades of use could be just as revolutionary
most drip irrigation tech evolved from early Israeli efforts...
Sprayed irrigation is incredibly wasteful. Many of the tiny aerosol droplets evaporate before they hit the ground. Hot ground will cause more evaporation before sprayed water can penetrate to the roots. Droplets concentrate a small amount of water into a narrow column penetrating straight down. Even better is subsurface irrigation with soil over the drip lines, which further prevents surface evaporation.
Moister farmers of Tatooine.
It’s not even that hard or expensive, either. It’s all we use on some of our fruit research farms at my university
The leading drip-irrigation company in Israel is Netafim. I am a patent attorney and worked with them on a couple of their inventions.
They found that the wettest years in the SW always occur after the dry lake bed of Laguna Salgada floods with gulf seawater. Its considered one of the best spots in the world for natural evaporation. Theres a plan to connect The Salton Sea to the Gulf through Laguna Salgada, and its pretty brilliant.
Same happens in Australia anytime lake Eyre gets a lot of water(used to be an inland sea so extremely salty). Until the lake dries up the surrounding weather improves dramatically, even hundreds of km away rainfall increases and heatwaves become less likely.
@@Jake12220 they can fill lake eyre with sea water by removing a sand dune. It will displace about 200000 people in South Australia but would solve our rainfall problems and increase arable land
The Salton 'Sea' was a man-made ecological disaster to start with. Why make it worse?!
@@paulhaynes8045 I guess to continue agriculture and life in the states mentioned?
@@paulhaynes8045 To stabalize the water level, or Southern California will have to be abandoned.
1. Increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of industrial water treatment plants can be one more way of solving this problem. In addition, it can reduce water pollution.
2. Also, we can increase the efficiency of our water delivery systems, which can reduce the water wasted.
3. Talking about desalination plants, the method of converting sea water into watervapour and then condensing it makes more sense. Also, the salts can be used for their own uses.
4. Making sure we loose the least amount of water in irrigation. This can be achieved by using systems like drip irrigation or aquoponics systems.
There are actually tons of ways to deal with brine:
You can mix it with threated sewage to equalize with the local sea water salt level.
You can dump on rivers near where it meets the ocean to it reaches the ocean at the same salinity.
You can pre mix with with ocean water to reduce its concentration.
Spread the output so it has more sea water per liter to equalize with.
You can let the brine dry and use the salt in many applications.
This are just some. There is probably more.
putting salt in rivers, where there are fish and plants NOT used to a salty environment, would be catastrophic.
@@zvipatent You are not supposed to put it in the middle of a river.
I meant to dispose it 50~100m before the river meets the ocean. This is a very small zone that there is usually very little life to begin with.
@@vitor900000 Gotcha
Further usage: (YT Video) REAPower: Electricity from brine
Sell the salt to other states’ DOTs for icy road conditions
Vertical farming supposedly uses up to 97% less water too. Crops that can be grown using this method should be done so the farming land that would have been used for these crops can be used for a better purpose and rivers can flow again without being drained or deviated.
Much of those acres are farming Almonds, Pistachios, and Figs. Can any of those be grown with "Vertical Farming"?
@@ToddDesiato that’s why I said “crops that CAN be grown using THIS method should be done…”
The solar desalination dome sounds like a great solution for coastal areas, but it would also require a lot of energy for the drinking water to get pumped to where it's needed. Would it be viable to double dip and use the energy from the solar panels to pump water into the desalination dome? As for the resulting brine water, pump it to a reservoir to let the water evaporate. Send the leftover salt to snowy places that consume salt by the ton for snow removal.
Science-TH-camr and such channel meanwhile supplement this on so many levels,
it is literally impossible to name all, but let me just list 2:
-Spreading science to yourself and others helps prevent society collapsing in the first place.
-Knowing how Batteries and such work AND especially how
FUTURE SCIENCE can reduce the biggest issue with batterys (you know which, dont you) is Key
to being Prepared.
most snowy places dont use salt, here in colorado they use a snow melt chemical that doesn't rust everything. the damage done to infrastructure and transportation by using salt is hugely detrimental to the economy, and as it stands now salt is so cheap it may as well be free, so i don't see many municipalities wanting to change back to salt in the future.
Awesome topic, Matt! Especially when we are seeing lakes and major rivers around the world drying up due to climate change. Not only does the loss of water and waterways have an impact on our food supply, but also all of those industries that need our waterways to transport goods, provide recreation and generate power. Any way we can find to get good, clean potable water we need to be putting our ideas and energy behind.
It's not just climate change but also more use of water from the same sources. Anyway, I have faith that humans will come up with solutions in the near future.
I have always said that only fruit plants should be grown in desert regions requiring irrigation. Directing the flow to each individual plant is much more ecconomical and safer for the environment.
Regenerative farming will help with the soil's water retention as well as providing other benefits.
What i think is: If CATL can push out an efficient sodium ion battery in the near future then that and the solar dome desalination plant would be a match made in heaven.
The other techs look cool, too. I need to look into those a bit more.
Solution: pipe ocean air to mountain top. It will condense into fresh water. Let fresh water flow down and generate power to keep the cycle going. Easy😊
One thing not brought up in the lake Meade issue is the fact that the single largest drive of low levels are drainage rules so instead of keeping more they've been draining the lake.
Thank you for the great synopsis of the fresh water shortage. Definitely one of the great existential problems facing our future.
There are a couple of additional points to consider:
- Efficient dilution of brine could mitigate the environmental impact of discharging it. After all the fresh water extracted is minimal compared to the volume in the ocean and the salt was already dissolved in it.
- A few years back there was a big hype about the potential Graphene membranes, able to filter salt water at very low pressure.
the news went silent but perhaps there is more to it.
- Renewable energy could be used to power the desalination plants.
The heat from molten salt reactors could be used to desalinate seawater as well as to generate electricity in a zero-carbon process.
I was writing the same idea, I am so glad someone else also has the same thinking! This kinda archological structure could revolutionize way we produce our needs (energy+water combined in one, hence eliminating the efficiency penalties like energy transfer and desalination process a great way)
@@XavierBetoN hello sir! Really curious about the topic but i’m having a hard time understanding the terms you guys used. Can you please tell me more about what the OP mean about molten salt reactors?
@@gabrielpaulo864 Hi Gabriel,
You can find Molten Salt Reactor Fundamentals here... th-cam.com/video/aqPLU8ge-0w/w-d-xo.html That should get you started There are longer documentaries you can access as well if you want to dig deeper.
You think synergetically, you are thinking on a very high level. That sounds like a great idea, although I'm not a scientist. I would consider, after doing due diligence, investing in such a thing. It appears you have solved more than the brine problem Ben, you deserve a raise!
How many molten salt reactors are in service now?
The funny thing about hoover dam is that it's the problem causing its own reduced levels.cutting the flow of the river reduced the humidity levels in the entire region.when clouds do come overhead there's no moisture in the atmosphere to absorb to make them heavy enough to rain.every time the flow has been reduced Mojave county has gotten less rain the following monsoon season
Evaporative domes and nanofiber separators also create brine. Some could be distilled and mined for minerals and sea salts; excess could be mixed with sea water to prevent it from sinking.
The salt could be used as a component for building material ie brick or premanufactured walls. This salt actually helps to make homes buildings healthier . It will also reduce the amount of other substances like concrete, sand , etc to make a more sustainable product.
Water will be the" blue gold " of the future.
If you are looking at using Sodium Chloride (salt) as a building material for brick or concrete, you better have some crazy chemistry PHD. NaCL is very water soluble. Some folks tried to use sea sand (which contained salt) to make concrete. These salt laced concrete will crumble after a few years due to moisture in the air dissolving the salt which in turn, weakens the concrete bonds. I guess this probably be okay in Mars.
@@Meandaddy yes, he is from spaceX :)
@@nadirsiddiqui9559 Oh yes, that may work in Mars!
We don’t take drinking water for granted - we don’t have mains water and collect rainwater. When we lived on a boat we had to make drinking water by RO using solar power. Didn’t the IPCC in their last report confirm that extreme weather events hadn’t increased in frequency?
Hello Matt,
Similar to the dome, there are already a couple of power plants that utilize the sun and mirrors to heat a salt brine into a plasma. This plasma then powers a boiler system comparable to a Heat Recover Steam Generator. Crescent Dunes is the name of one of these projects, check it out. I wonder if something like this could be used with the osmosis process, building the pressure in place of the fossil fuels and be fed by the brine byproduct.
Yes. I DO think the nanotech solutions will be Very helpful.. Thank you for this comprehensive update. This I need to know.
I think we also need to reduce our water consumption. We should think about applying vertical farming on a larger scale, in addition to nanomembrane desalination.
No. You till the land and respect the land like it's always been. We don't need too reinvent food growing. They need too stop poisoning it
@@Crazzybeast69 Till the land during a drought? No. Reinvent food production to reduce water usage, increase quantity produced and eliminate pesticides.
@@Crazzybeast69 poisoning ? what ?
vertical farming works..but only with artificial light. as each layer will block more and more natural light from the layer below it. More artificial light means more electricity needed
@@Badkitty24 Which is easily solved by building an underground geothermal power plant then building the vertical farms on top. Unlimited stable energy with no fuel requirement plus waste heat to use for temperature control.
These nano filter could be used in combination with magnetic spinning filters as a initial pre filter; since these are primarily polarized ions. These are sometimes used for water used in cooling towers for industrial AC plants. They are effective, but additional filter is need for drinkable water. I believe this would reduce the turn over rate of these nano filtration systems. I like the idea of using solar energy to augment the power needed for these systems.
exactly; there's an optimal staged approach, and it will likely vary by geography and water content.
You could have evaporation flotillas. Platforms that take water into columns to solar evaporate. The columns allow the brine to redissolve before it sinks to the bottom too. So locations like the west coast that can feed some water to the southwest would be amazing for this passive idea.
Great video. I learned some new developments in this field.
One issue: Demand is the problem. It was referenced as 'responsoble consumption '.
This has to happen as the primary step or else it's akin to having Solar PV array to run your A/C...then leaving the doors & windows open.
The issue is that the usual water supply for most of the state comes from the Sierra forests, and they are dead from drought.
The future growth potential in every industry will be recycling and repurposing of “waste” into other useful products….nothing will be seen as waste but rather as a potential material for something we can utilize in an environmentally respectful way…
Again, reclaiming water from non-agricultural uses is a tiny percentage of the problem.
One part of the energy grid that could be tapped for providing high pressure water sources is geothermal, that combined with desalinization from a toxic waste source, and you might have a potable water source to suppliment agriculture, or even aquaculture; we're going to need fish farms, and warm water helps with tropical fish. Geothermal is an untapped gold-mine.
Sci Show and Veritasium and many others cover new tech all the time.
Know them?
Hi Matt,
A big step to bringing down agricultural water consumption is agro forrestry, save soil movement has a lot of statistics supported by UN that explains how it all works. Hope you are able to look into it and make a video on it
The main thing for both water and electricity is not just the production but to lower how much we use is the key.
C"mon Matt, yes it takes a lot of water to grow alfalfa and other crops, but unless ALL crops were grow in Southern California, most of that water falls out of the sky. It does here. Sometimes too much. It's only a problem in the Desert Southwest. The region just can't support that amount of population and agriculture.
I hope your new tech will supply cheap clean water to the DSW and the rest of the world.
I completely agree. For example - some semiarid regions, like the Western plains, support sparse vegetation, but not enough for agriculture. Those areas are perfect for range animals such as cattle, essentially feeding themselves and then being collected later. Raising cattle this way could probably be very water-friendly but of course will not produce a lot of meat. Perhaps, part of the solution is also changing people's expectation of meat consumption.
In much of the Midwest we get plenty of water for raising crops without requiring irrigation. There are many other areas with similarly fertile soil and regular rainful. Ukraine and Punjab come to mind out of my own personal experience.
I would just like to add to George and Bryan's comments that in the Willamette Valley in Oregon where I reside. We can grow and harvest 4 cuttings of Alfalfa per year with zero extra water. Just what comes naturally from rainfall. It's an odd year that extra irrigation needs to be applied. Some of the figures from this article are too localized to the Southwest.
Shhht guys, you cant make this much logics without taking this fake narrative away. We HAVE TO focus on the problem areas that were dry to start with and shouldnt be used to grow such crops in the first place... What you are proposing is to use common sense and grow these things in places where there is an abundance of water.. And to the people out there thinking there is a fresh water problem on this planet, there isnt! Some places are indeed getting dryer..very correct, but other places MUCH wetter with even floods.. so its just a location issue. As well, just because a cow / kg of meat costs X amount of water to produce, it doesnt mean this water gets wasted, or is gone after it is used by the life stock. Its just displaced and returns back into the circle of life. Sometimes i wonder if peoples ability for common sense is gone...or perhaps it was never there?
Now, is that why "Southern California" declared a water crisis and LA asked people not to water their lawns? They can only do it once in a week according to CBS News.
A large amount of fresh water accounted for agriculture is rain water and isn't representative of the water used for crops. I'm not sure on the percentage, id love to see more data on the subject.
In Calif. they dumped ALL of the reservoirs, not just for the smelt. The UN came in saw what was happening and said they found the drought was on purpose and left.
another suggested idea is to use excess heat from molten salt thorium reactors to distill seawater. the very high heat (750º - 1400ºC) would leave no brine, all water would be gone. this heat would also be useful in industrial applications. electricity + freshwater + industrial products - oh, it can also consume the vast supply of nuclear waste from existing conventional fission plants in its fuel cycle.
cool stuff. I had no idea how little residential water consumption contributed to the overall fresh water demand. Makes an even greater case for vertical/solar pv shaded farming.
Makes a good case for greenhouse farming in general. I mean, if my country of the Netherlands can be one of the biggest agricultural exporters in the world with only 53 times the space of New York there is no reason why greenhouses wouldn't work just as well or better in other parts of the world. In fact, the US only produced 1.5 times as many agricultural products by value in 2021 with over 200 times the landmass.
Nice to see the quality of your videos improving Matt. Thanks for sharing
Higher temps = higher evaporation = higher humidity = higher rainfall/snowfall = greater redistribution of water worldwide = different areas with adequate water = areas where new agriculture/habitation will develop. The one element that is left out in the higher temps scenario is that the water does not disappear. It goes somewhere and that somewhere is into the atmosphere where most will be redeposited on the earths surface.
I lived in Dutch Sint Maarten for about 6 years. The island has no appreciable fresh water and is dependent on a desalination plant for fresh water supply. They make plenty of water. So much so that I was surprised to be served water bottled in Sint Maarten on a cruise ship. On the other hand, California recently voted down the building of a desalination plant. Instead, they now have year long water rationing and they are still diverting irrigation water the save the sand dart, what ever that is.
I was starting to worry when you started with the oft-repeated disinformation about the water usage of tree nuts. but then you moved on to the water cost of meat production
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X17308592
@@UndecidedMF 3:32 Mat Reads
"The average water footprint of a single California almond is 12 gallons (ca. 54.5 liters)"
His quoted source says
"The water footprint of one California almond has averaged 12 liters (3.2 gallons)."
Two thoughts. California has two desalination plants, that despite their water shortages, refuse to use them because of the perceived environmental impact. Instead California drains the lakes across the western states. This isn't just for agriculture, but golf courses and communities with lawns and trees built in deserts. Scientific papers have shown that reduced surface area of standing water (lakes) reduces evaporation and correspondingly precipitation. Kind of obvious, but never mentioned in the media. Also, evaporation provides a cooling effect. While this results in the symptoms you describe: reduced water levels and higher temperatures, referring to Global Warming implies the source of the problem is the carbon footprint. Further, is your definition of "brine" merely water with a higher concentration of salt and minerals? It is not a poison and put back into the ocean in a more distributed fashion to allow faster diffusion would solve any environmental impact. Perhaps the solution is to make the desalination of water also produce usable salt and minerals. Regardless, California should be held accountable for the environmental damage they are causing.
you are incorrect, water in the air is almost 3x worse particle for particle than CO2. CO2 has a refractive index of like 0.24, and water is like 0.71. by evaporating water, you drastically increase the greenhouse gas effect. not a good idea if your goal is to reduce anthropogenic climate change.
@@mythmurzin I don't think that this comparation of co² with water is that simple. Because co2 stays in atmosphere indefinitely while water will eventually condensate and fall as rain to refill underground resivuor, and eventually oceans, by rivers.
Also we are already putting a lot of water in the air with 400+ millions of cars burning fuel. And in the next 40 years they will all be eletric and will stop emitting water vapor. As long as the desalinization doesn't create more vapor that 400kk cars we are at the same level as today. And like I sad, raining probably takes the water from the air, eventually.
I can be wrong of course, but if water vapor was that big of deal, all the global warming reserch would not be concentrated in co2 and methane.
@@luigiii1700 yes, water vapor is that big of a deal. and co2 does not stay in the atmosphere indefinitely. if it did, we would have a co2 concentration of over 7500 PPM. and if you think cars are the largest sources of water vapor in the air, you need to do more research. all the cars in the world are less than 1% of annual water vapor introduced to the atmosphere. and unfortunately because of humans drilling water wells in places without natural water flows, it is causing huge problems for places like africa and australia.
My solution to the lack of water problem of Southwestern USA should be centred around bringing in Saltwater from Gulf of Mexico & Baja California to the interior desserts. These should be shallow but spread out saltwater lakes. Why?!
When there is prevailing wind, it tends to pick up moisture as it travels. If we know what direction the wind travels and at what speed, you can work out the humidity level the wind could bring to a local area. Furthermore, we also know that as the wind deflects of the surface of water, it cools down. So, in this case, the extra moisture in various desserts would both bring down temperatures and bring humidity.
Knowing wind direction is also very important to estimate where sufficient evaporation would push cloud cover over an area. And this is important, because clouds deflect sunlight of the surface of the planet. So, if we could build a bunch of shallow salt lakes that follow a path of a prevailing wind (picking up moisture along the road), we could engineer it in such a way to get maximum cloud cover over certain cities where the consumption level is greatest (to slow local evaporation)...
The only con I can think of is the fact that sea water is corrosive and could break pumps & metal/plastic infrastructure. But on the pro side, its practically free & there's no shortage of it!
Very interesting. I have just completed two wells at the Salton Sea where Lilac Solutions will be attempting to extract lithium from the produced brine with a pilot plant late March and early April. Wish us luck.
Hey, Matt. I really like your videos. I just subscribed! I love hearing about new technologies and you present them very well. On this subject of running out of water, I don’t think that technology will save us. The biggest concern I think belongs to the land being able to store water. Our land management is the culprit for the mega drought and droughts. But this may not be a subject for your videos. I sure hope that some of these technologies help people avoid suffering but not progress the land degradation any further.
Yes! Land water retention is a huge issue that's never talked about enough. Planting cover crops can help. Removing "drain tile" in the midwest, and instead try to drain the water down vertically, into aquifers, with technology such as the company Parjana has produced. Planting trees in tropical climates like Ecosia funds can help restore water cycles. Natural farming with lots of fruit & nut tree forests. Rainwater infiltration in cities. Grand Rapids Michigan has done a lot of good work, including separating their rainwater system from the sanitary sewer, which Metro Detroit has not done. This stuff needs to be Federally mandated and coordinated!
i agree we cant keep over-engineering ourselves out of problems, thats how they started in the first place .
Since GOD created the 🌎 and time began there has been water conflicts so why now are the libtards trying to make water scarcity into a global warming fake bullshit the Mayan civilization went down because of a mega drought we can drill down deep and get water the same as oil we are not I repeat not running out of water read the Bible it will tell you this don't fall into the political trap of global warming it's just a tool for control of the week minded people
The other thing that is going to help with the freshwater issue is lab grown meat, as you pointed out in a previous vid, this uses significantly less resources than current meat production does.
Nice point.
It's another piece of the puzzle.
Eating bugs for protein is much cheaper. Meal worm flour
@@UndecidedMF Along with lab grown meat/protein resources, other water conservation puzzle pieces are artificial intelligence-, big data-, hyper local indoor vertical farming- , soilless-, air-, plant-, microbial fermentation-, fine mycelium- and NASA Deep Space Food Challenge based meat, protein, etc. alternatives that use up to 95% less water and land to produce and consume food so that we ***"Eat Less Water"***. Please do more or new vids on these alternatives.
Keep up the much appreciated, eagerly anticipated and great work!
Hi Matt. Great video. Any update on zero discharge desalination systems?
Given that 70% of our water use is for agriculture, and there ARE regenerative agriculture methods that can work in even dry environments with very little or no irrigation, water scarcity is yet another reason we really need to move to regenerative agriculture ASAP.
Glad you covered the toxic brine issue. Hopefully someone will come up with a use for bi-products from these different processes. It would be easier if we just used water more efficiently and grew crops according to the local climate. You are correct, 50 litres for one almond is nuts, so is 10 litres for one asparagus spear in the usa when it grows naturally without irrigation in other parts of the world. True food and product pricing would change how we use water.
Mixing it at river/sea estuary points would mitigate the brine toxicity problem.
10 litres for one asparagus spear... Where did you get that? There used to be a big asparagus farm here. There was no irrigation just rainfall. We only get about 27" of rain a year. Asparagus is a labor intensive crop. Center pivot irrigation has to be one of the most inefficient ways of irrigating. Not sure you could design a better way to evaporate water before it reaches the ground.
The "toxic brine issue" is just made up by environmentalists that want us to drink toilet water instead of building desalination plants. The brine is just concentrated sea water. If you dilute it 100 to 1 using a leaky pipe under the ocean How could that hurt anything?
@@jamestucker8088 Yes just divering some pumping and having a mix chamber and done but the crybullies will never let it go.
toxic? that is just concentrated sea water, just mix it with normal sea water and you get slightly concentrated sea water...
Rather than filling my head with worthless content, I LOVE TO FILL MY MIND WITH THESE KIND OF INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE 🤘♥️
8:00 why do you need to pump the vapor out? Couldn't you just have tubes at the top for it to flow into or is that not efficient enough?
Hi Matt, it is all right making fresh water with all these new methods but unless we find a use for the brine left behind we are only staking up another massive problem for the future.
Just subscribed to the channel Matt, I really like the undecided videos, this one has a lot of great information! I absolutely think nanotechnology for freshwater desalination will work, but the one question I have is: on Earth, can’t nature balance the water supply on it’s own naturally? So if there is a low area because of drought, can’t it replenish over time? Or is the overpopulation, anthropogenic carbon emissions, inefficient irrigation and agriculture that you mentioned, overpowering nature’s ability do that? I would love to hear from anyone with insights, thanks
Nature can balance things. The "balance" for all the man made changes is for nature to cause more people to die until humans stop doing stupid things
yes
As always a very informative and well presented video, would be good to get up dates over time.
You have the goodies Matt. Please continue to keep us informed.
OK, but for Californians, isn't it a lot easier to funnel the hot and humid freshwater vapor inherent within the couple of yards of air just above the ocean's surface through a condenser atop a low-freeboard anchored barge that simply circulates 38-degree water up from coastal drop-off depths, wrings-out the fresh water, then sends both seawater and dry air right back to get more? How much could that possibly cost? How many acres of humid air can you find off the 840-mile coastline? Why bother with filters, membranes, and boiling water, when the condenser runs on almost nothing and costs almost nothing?
Some of the brine water could be added back to the water at coastal sewage plant discharge or at rivers where they dump into the ocean. The remaining salt could replace salt mining.
Science-TH-camr and such channel meanwhile supplement this on so many levels,
it is literally impossible to name all, but let me just list 2:
-Spreading science to yourself and others helps prevent society collapsing in the first place.
-Knowing how Batteries and such work AND especially how
FUTURE SCIENCE can reduce the biggest issue with batterys (you know which, dont you) is Key
to being Prepared.
Thank you! Am so grateful that for the research you do and the videos you produce!I wish so many people across so many walks of life and industries would see this video! It seems like the situation with agriculture worldwide is a extremely vital key to reducing the water consumption. Would love to see a video on regenerative agriculture practices on small scales, because I think it's important that people be able to earn a living from making food for their neighbors that aren't making food. And also, would like to hear about regenerative, sustainable large-scale agricultural Technologies and practices.
Hello Spirit Flower. ¿Where do you live? I ask because a USA company called 80 Acres produces and sells computer automated "3D hydroponic food plants" set in a 4 floor compact building that replaces the food produced in 80 acres of flat land cultivation. They regenerate 98% of water used irrigation. That is the future. About 180 plants are installed and operating next to mid-size cities.
I would like to hear a discussion related to this and/or some clarification on what you mean when you say "using up" water... since water used for agriculture, ultimately goes back into the land, and presumably evaporates, leading to rain and... well, that whole water cycle thing.... I'm assuming that the problem is more that this rain falls elsewhere, perhaps over the ocean?... where it is not replenishing freshwater supplies.
Based on several TH-cam videos that I’ve seen on Kuwait (the #2 Country that is featured on that chart you showed on the water scarcity chart thing), they supposedly deal with incredibly hot heat (we’re talking possibly around 130F-160+F) and only 10 days of rainfall. They had to create desalination plants for their water issue, so that they could get clean drinking water from their own oceans.
To address the brine issue (although I have no idea if Kuwait still dumps brine back into their own oceans or not), apparently what they do with the brine is that they load it into planes that take up and release that salt near clouds, so that they cause extra rainfall (also known as cloud seeding) and that rain falls near one of their streams so that they could have extra clean drinking water.
What I also find incredibly interesting about Kuwait is that they decided to create water channels all throughout their land so that everyone residing there could basically have their own beach.
I'm going to chip in my two cents by making a prediction. Non-metallic magnetization. Now, while this phenomenon has only been successful with graphene (that I know of), the invention/production of a Sodium-Chloride magnet (or some other variation that achieves desalination) may have significant effects on how global entities obtain fresh water. Also, take a ballpeen hammer to Nestle and the aquifer-drainers. They're bad.
I'm going to throw in my two cents and make a prediction: non-metallic magnetization. While this phenomenon has only been successful with graphene (that I'm aware of), the invention/production of a Sodium-Chloride magnet (or some other variation that achieves desalination) could have significant effects on how global entities obtain fresh water. Also, slam a ballpeen hammer on Nestle and the aquifer-drainers.
I love the way you explain things so that the average Joe can understand. Thanks, Mike 🇦🇺
Most fresh water for cattle comes from green sources, ie rain. Meat per gram is far more nutrient dense than any plant, and the manure from the cattle refertilizes the soil. Basic ecology. Plants feed cattle, cattle feeds us and also plants. Cows are fed all the inedible parts of each harvest which makes up to 40% the weight of all grown plant produce.
We'd still need to deal with the underlying issue of agriculture sucking up all the remaining water we have. The government needs to step in and subsidize/force farmers to switch to drip irrigation and other more water efficient methods. It also needs to just put its foot down on water intensive crops being grown in places that don't have enough water, e.g. almonds; subsidize farmers of those crops to switch crops. We're going to have to pay more for almonds, but it beats running out of water.
Thanks for covering this important topic with an interesting and educational video.
Question. At 7:20 you said, "…the salt overload consumes oxygen…"
How so? The ocean floor already holds natural haloclines. It's not clear to me that adding brine to the ocean would create problems. If the scale was large enough then yes anything could be a problem, but I don't know how the salt overload would consume oxygen [I think you mean oxygen dissolved in the ocean?].
It's a myth that the brine from desalination plants is harmful, someone propagating ideas that sound plausible on paper but no basis in fact. The salt levels are rarely more than twice the normal salinity levels and marine plants, corals and animals not only survive near the outlet pipes but thrive. Check out the clips on TH-cam from the desalination plants in Australia, it's remarkable how much life has made these areas home.
the main problem with brine flow is where you dump it: deep sea, maybe not a problem. but a lot of countries are dumping their brines into shallow, coral filled seas like the red sea and persian gulf do not like the sudden inflows of deoxengenated ultra saline brine. conventional desalination processes make this brine and them dump it in the water where it rolls across the sea bed like a underwater flood, its the super similar to the stuff deep-water brine pools are made of and those basically kill any fish or critter not accustomed to them.
It seems every animal and some plants have a way to process amounts of salt and extract the water they need to live, with some life eg fish and seaweed being better than others. I look at that and think surely there's a way for technology to replicate the process.
What?!? What are talking about, how does every animal have a way to process salt and extract water?? If they did we wouldn't need desalination processes. Plants and animals are highly particular to their environment.
@@almcchesney Depends on the amount of salt
@@almcchesney if we were unable to process a small amount of salt we wouldn't add it to things. But all creatures need water even sea creatures
@@almcchesney It’s true, most organisms have a way to process salts, since most organisms use Na and Ca and K for their organic processes. Only ones constantly exposed to excess salt develop more efficient ways to process it. Some plants in mangrove swamps secrete their excess salt through their leaves, for example.
The smaller the organism the less tolerant it is to excessive changes in the salinity of their environment, usually.
Osmosis is used by/in nature. The technology we got from that is reversed-osmosis. Your remark is a little bit late...... ;-)
If used correctly, Nano mites would be able to clean up any pollution in the air water and soil. And make everything far better. The options are limitless once we finally upgrade more people.
The Saudi solution seems the most obvious to me. Because I grew up in the driest inhabited continent I thought about this for a long time. It begins with ocean laid pipelines pumping lightly filtered seawater to the centre of Australia. Extremely long glass tubes in the desert that evaporate via upward & angular tubes (glass again to maintain the evaporated steam) into massive storage tanks. These can be pumped anywhere including being utilised for crops even in the middle of Australia. The place may be dry but it grows almost anything with a reasonable water supply. After each evaporation the next load of salt water will flush the remaining solution into drainage tanks where they can be stored as a mountain of salt to be accessed by whichever mining company wants to use it. The pumping can be done using solar & evaporation can be enhanced by solar heating. This could be done by various teams from different industries.
The lightly filtered seawater would collect rubbish including plastics & similar ocean toxins to be banked into a tank closer to the ocean. Hopefully this could be done without endangering sea life.
About the start of the video: Would increased global temperatures increase evaporation? Paired atmospheric pollution, wouldn't this increase rainfall? Maybe not in the same places it once was, but overall, creating a (sort of) balance? I hear a lot about decreased rainfall as if the water is utterly destroyed, and then asking about it produces a nastiness more in line with (bad) religion than science. I just want an explanation. Please.
The water intensity of meat does not take into consideration that much livestock feed is made from crop byproducts (so crops would be grown anyway) and pasture grass watered with rainwater. As for the water consumed directly by livestock, it goes through the animal pretty quickly.
Can we safely drink cow pee? Nope, so it's still making water unusable.
Plus you should look again at how much feed is crop byproduct vs grown specifically for animal consumption. That talking point was paid for by corporations, who just like BP/Exxon/Phillip Morris don't want to lower their profits.
From Bloomberg, not exactly known as anti-corporate: 41% of US land is used to feed farm animals. 70% of the rainforest in Brazil has been cut down just for pasture land, much of the remaining goes to crops to feed the animals too.
From the USDA: More than 90 million acres* are planted to corn, with most of it used as the main energy ingredient in livestock feed. In 202 roughly 50% was used directly for feed, with 30% used for ethanol. Some of the DDGS from the ethanol production can be used to feed animals.
Kurzgesagt also just did a video on meat.
*That was in 2010, it's much more nowadays.
@@Jcewazhere Obviously you wouldn’t drink urine - but it is available for the rest of the ecosystem, like the plants, and then, the water cycle. To think otherwise is to act as though the water is destroyed upon consumption.
The problem with the Nanotech might be the durability. The filtration rate on a solardome is always 100%.. you never need to fear that Salt or Microplastics slip through because that is absolutely impossibe. With the Nanotech, you have lots of sources that can fail and let through contaminated water.
Great video and interesting technology. You did forget to mention the brine issue with these new desalination methods. 👍Thank You.
which effects will desalination have on the oceans? will the leftover brine eventually cause areas of the oceans to become saltier, thus affecting wildlife?
The amount of salt brine being added back to the ocean is irrelevant as long as it is able to be diluted over a large area rather than accumulating in a pool near a single shoreline outlet. The brine is ideally transported at least a kilometer offshore, released through a series of small outlets along the sides of the pipe and across a large area.
@@DMahalko Also melting glaciers add fresh water to the oceans making them less salty. If we desalinate and remove the amount of fresh water the melting glaciers are adding then the overall average salt concentration remains constant.
@@raysundby6131 if im not wrong, the water comes back to the sea right? Waste water will be treated and released into the ocean. So taking fresh water from the ocean and giving it back dirtier fresh water shouldn’t be a problem for water salinity.
PUNS!! OMG, your puns and dry delivery! Lol. Mostly giggles, with a few groans. But, water is a driver of all our activity, and glad to see your dive into how tech can help or even solve the issue with money, application, and scaling! Always HOPEFUL!! I like that, so thanks.
The puns are baaaaaaaaack!
8:30 I just wonder why not boild water from brine, until you get salty mud. Water is water and if boiled, salt will stay while steam will turn into gas. That is just destination, and we could use "brine for it, to a) squeeze more water from it, and create salty mud that can be left on "salt deserts" or processed for other minerals.
12:00 I dont consider that water wasted, as those giant lakes make vapor that helps regions around to have rain. Its not efficient if you consider source, but if we would take that water from ocean (or other salt water source), and use it for brine drying, byproduct is more rain in the vicinity, which helps stop water shortages as well.
Serious question. I know that a huge issue we're currently facing is also the dilution of the deep sea currents. Could we possibly dump brine at natural saline waterfalls to help counteract this dilution? I'm super curious.
One could imagine a number of mixing techniques for brine, all of which consume energy and/or material resources thus bringing up the cost of desalination.
Something I've always wondered is what would happen if a huge pipe to pump water from the sea to somewhere in the middle of a desert was made because it seems like a dumb idea but also one that might have interesting consequences, that said I'm not a scientist so maybe it'd do nothing.
Totally agree except that you could literally restore entire systems this way
Not a dumb idea just no suitable for water selling
companies
it would be a disaster. The desert has already to much salt
Do u mean desalinated water or just salt water ?
Coconuts?
You make planet earth a little better with each of your videos. Your presence and delivery method is a treat and a blessing. Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much 😀
Your channel is so encouraging and inspiring. I am really glad you do what you do.
great video Matt. im curious how much water for a pound of almonds to make a more fair comparison to the beef.?
Undecided: Come for the tech, stay for the puns.
He's nuts. :D
Please do keep up us updated on this important matter ... especially for the lithium extractor from Energy X and if it is going to be adapted for desalination.
I am also noticing that a lot of project in the work you talk in all of your videos will be completed in next coming years (the latest I saw was 2025). That's not a lot of time so, hopefully, we hope you "post mortem" interview with the engineers of said projects (as you did before) but AFTER the completion of the project so we can get a better estimate of the feasibility of the project.
I will! I'm keeping a close eye on the companies and topics I cover, so will continue to update along the way.
@@UndecidedMF cool! Something to look forward to in the future :)
Areas in that Colorado River look like they would be a good spot for vapor coverage. I don't know the exact name but basically make a layer of space that gathers water condensation
Have you done any reporting on the Dutch home water recycle appliance?
Of course, when we say things like "a hamburger takes 1500L of water to make", it's not like that water is consumed and disappears from the cycle. You irrigate land, the plants suck it up, and return it to the atmosphere via transpiration, and eventually it gets dumped again as rain. More water "consumption" = more rain. In some sense it doesn't matter how much water you "use" this way, because it's going to come back to you, and eventually the system reaches an equilibrium where the water being "consumed" and the rate at which it is being returned as rain will be the same.
The issue is where and when that rain falls. It doesn't come back instantly, and it doesn't come back in the same place as it was consumed. And of course climate change runs the risk of significantly changing the where and the when. If you "use" the water in a parched area, and it gets returned in an area that already floods regularly, everything gets worse.
It strikes me that all these methods don't overcome the disadvantages of reverse osmosis, except for the greenhouse condenser, which I would expect to have very low output given its mode of operation. Same again for the nanofibre technology, which I assume also needs to have the freshwater side to be cooled to operate correctly, meaning it requires the refrigeration process, a process that is notoriously inefficient for moving heat around. I will also add, condensed water is highly susceptible to bacterial infections too.
Heat pumps are notoriously inefficient? That’s the exact opposite of what I’ve always heard. One of the few things that can get over 100% efficient due to the exploitation of boiling points
@@benjaminnicholas5759
I guess, instead of running the heat pump purely to cool the condenser side, you can pump the heat from the condenser side to the evapourator side. The system is still going to generate more heat than it can dissipate and you're going to need to dump some of that heat to keep the condenser side cool enough that it remains below the dew point of the air.
Like it's more efficient, but it still generates waste heat as a direct by-product of physical limitations when pumping heat.
PS. Heat pumps are great at heating for the same reason they're not ideal for cooling, they often require more work to operate than the amount heat they move. But unfortunately they're the only way we know how to repeatably move heat out of a system in a cost effective manner which is why we use them so extensively.
@@benjaminnicholas5759, Have to be careful when explaining efficiency. The high efficiency doesn't come directly from exploitation of boiling points. It is really a comparison against generating heat directly vs. moving already existing heat from point A to point B. You still use energy to do the work. The source is just treated as an externality. I love my geothermal heat pump and it is far more efficient than generating heat directly, but the real efficiency exploitation is using free solar radiation captured by the ground when in heating mode, or dumping the unwanted heat into the hot water tank (which we want hot anyway) thereby avoiding the direct hot water heating cost in cooling mode. In an industrial cooling mode, it isn't really over 100% efficient as that would break the laws of energy conservation, we just consider the heat sink (air, water, whatever) as free. Low boiling point refrigerant is just an example of a mechanism used to exploit the free heat source/sink.
I usually dont get too worried bcz in my country we manage to get freshwater reliably , but man am i shook to the core when i noticed my country is #11 on how much we’re gonna be suffering from freshwater shortage
I wonder that can't we just carry out the process of simple distillation?
Like, first evaporate the sea water then condense the steam to obtain pure H2O. After that, add minerals to the water, and it's done!
another fantastically well-made video
Glad you enjoyed it
I just wish less channels spread eco-terrorist misinformations about "meat water footprints", most of that water goes right back into the soil (like through the cow) it's simmilar to all the water "lost" because you couldn't catch and collect all rainwater, this tweaks the numbers a lot.
Yah, sounds more like elites and politicians.
But i think brine is a big problem and should not sent back to sea !
eco-terrorist is definitely exaggerated here (i.e. spreading an incorrect claim does not constitute terrorism) but you're correct that many of the arguments surrounding veganism & water are oversimplified. For the record, I support veganism for environmental reasons - especially CO2 emissions & land use, but don't care about the animal rights side.
Yeah, but when you use 900 gallons of water to make one gallon of almond milk... You're probably still losing a few net gallons... A few.
Gotta love Kali makes the people not shower... But makes the almond milk 😏
How are nanofiber membranes different from the membranes used in reverse osmosis? And what heats up the water needed by the nanofiber membrane process?
I worked a few years in the oil field, and one of my jobs was managing saltwater disposal. Oil companies have wells that are designated for saltwater disposal. I wonder if it would be possible to dispose of the brine from these desalination plants in this same manner. This would of course require monitoring and standards to be put in place, but I do wonder if that may help in more ways than one. At the levels saltwater is disposed of there are vast amounts of saltwater already present. Also, I wonder if this process is already active due to the way the levels of earth above this saltwater level might act as a kind of natural filtration as this saltwater that is often under pressure from natural gas moves upward. I am no scientist, but it certainly seems as though the Earth has been filtering saltwater for thousands if not millions of years, because there are often enormous salt domes close by oil and gas fields. Could these salt domes be the result of thousands or even millions of years of this natural water filtration? Great video! 😊
natural filtration is the easiest and cheapest way to get fresh water from salt water and brine.. its not brain surgery.. drive inland from the coast a mile , drill a 1000 waterwells up and down the coast .. endless fresh water.. done.. simple..cheap.. give me a break
@@johnnyllooddte3415 So there is not a drought in California. All they need to do is drill a few wells. Somehow, that doesn't sound correct. It is the same in Texas which also has a sizable coast. Natural desalinization cannot produce the amounts of fresh water our almonds and other water-thirsty crops need.