Why Aren't Desalination Plants EVERYWHERE?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 มิ.ย. 2024
- Register now on @EcoFlowTech official website to stay tuned on the upcoming EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3 launch livestream and receive user benefits worth up to $3,000! Don't miss out! Tune in to the global EcoFlow online product launch event at 19:00 (PST) on June 24.
EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3: twobit.link/DeltaPro3
Why is desalination so hard? I mean it's not hard like Nuclear Fusion, we do it all over the world. But it's incredibly energy intensive and isn't used as much as maybe it should. This is a question I've wondered, and so I knew it would make for a good episode. The future of fresh drinking water is just too important and today I'm looking at why exactly desalination is so hard, and how future technology may change all that. Let's figure this out together!
#MakeTheSwitch #EcoFlow #EcoFlowDELTAPro3 #SolarGenerator #powerfulyetsimple
》》》SUPPORT THE SHOW!《《《
Join our Newsletter! twobit.link/Newsletter
Become a Patron! twobit.link/Patreon
Buying a Tesla? twobit.link/Tesla
》》》OUR PARTNERS《《《
Protect Yourself Online: twobit.link/DeleteMe
》》》GOING SOLAR?《《《
Energy Sage for Solar ⟫ twobit.link/EnergySage
》》》COMPANY OUTREACH 《《《
Sponsor A Video! sponsors@twobit.media
》》》CONNECT WITH US 《《《
Twitter 》 / twobitdavinci
Facebook 》 / twobitdavinci
Instagram 》 / twobitdavinci
Chapters
0:00 - Introduction
1:20 - The Science
2:50 - Thermodynamics
4:00 - Thermal Desalination
8:05 - Solar Desalination
9:30 - Reverse Osmosis
what we'll cover
two bit da vinci,desalination of water,desalination machine,desalination of seawater,can sea water desalination save the world,seawater desalination plant,future water technology,water desalination,desalination plant,desalination plants,how desalination works,future of water desalination,salt water,Why Don't We Have MORE Desalination Plants,desalination,why is desalination so hard,why is desalination so expensive,the future of desalination,drinking water, Why Don't We Build Desalination Plants EVERYWHERE?, Why Aren't Desalination Plants EVERYWHERE? - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![แฟนแนวใด๋ - ยูริ โตเกียวมิวสิค [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4_XVMuhhbsU/mqdefault.jpg)
Check out the EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3: twobit.link/DeltaPro3
Stay tuned on the upcoming EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3 launch livestream and receive user benefits worth up to $3,000! Don't miss out!
We recently learned that Light, evaporates water 4 times faster than Heat... at the same energy level.
I seen a video explaining that too
@@Wolframandheart KrAzY huh, and we thought we were smart:)
That video was fascinating! It's still a bit of a long way till we see it deployed in consumer products or utility scale desalinators, but it'lll be awesome
I watched that as well, and was gonna comment the same.
Definitely a useful tidbit considering mirrors and all the things they can be made out of.
But really, to save water and energy, step one should be to use less by banning non-agricultural irrigation. That means watering yards.
That doesn't mean yard plants are banned. There are always plants that can survive whatever level of water a region naturally gets.
And, with the built in exception for agriculture, people might start planting food-plants for landscaping.
That would have its own benefits.
California does not have a water problem. It has lots of water, but it is poorly managed. Your idea of using excess solar power for desalination and moving that water into reservoirs is brilliant. That’s water management! Bravo!!
Nah yall have greed problems down there!
Atmospheric Water Generation, basically treating air conditioner/dehumidifier condensate to potable quality, is another important fresh water solution. This can also be solar powered and in complementary usage with desalination for inland areas remote from oceans and fresh water sources.
It's hard to compete against the free and abundant energy of the sun.
Big oil lobbyists: Hold my beer...
Well actually not really. The problem is simple: You have a very intermittent delievery of the energy. This leads to very high infrastructure costs, since you need to be ready to collect the peaks and use them. This means you build inverters, power lines, electrolysis or desalination facilities for a large capacity, which then most of the time is idle. OR you build them in a low smaller scale, which then leads to huge losses when production is good, which is basically a waste in solar panel infrastructure.
So not matter how you do it, you will be highly inefficient and we really need to find more and more effective ways to cheaply store the energy.
Apparently even with the power of the sun we are all screwed if Ricky is the one trying to make fresh water for us.
Dude wipes off drops of steam. "We shall call this a success!"
@@testthewest123 We've had the exact same problem with non-solar power for decades though. Without storage on the grid, you have to have enough generation sitting around doing nothing to handle that one worst case heatwave day, that one major power plant tripping offline, or major transmission line getting randomly knocked out. California has suffered the threat of rolling blackouts for decades, because no private money wants to build the reserve plant that sits around for 362 days a year doing nothing, and earning nothing. If anything, smaller distributed generation and storage that we're seeing now with renewables is better even if you ignore climate change and greenhouse gases. Bring on the future!
Quaise is coming.
Why hasn't someone combined sand batteries and desalination? It seems like a no-brainer to capture solar heat and use it to evaporate seawater. No moving parts, No electricity needed and the salty brine left over, could be refined to be used in molten salt reactors.
the salty brine could be used only to prepare some pickles
@@orionbetelgeuse1937and then use the pickles to create electricity?
@@Averagesasquatch of course, it will work as good as the sand battery
Why not dry the brine and dump it in disused salt mines?
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. My wish is that states with coastlines would invest in fresh water.
I totally agree. Regardless of the cost it's worth it. We need it and the effluent can easily be evaporated to generate waste salt which then can either be dumped in the desert or reused for industrial or consumer use. Who says it needs to be dumped right back immediately off the waterline? That is stupid and of course is going to cause environmental harm. Either dump the effluent at least several miles off the coast or do the other as I stated.
A couple things.
First, if you're going to desalinate water, you should try to use fractional distillation to isolate useful chemicals. There's a lot of metals and minerals that could be used for making batteries.
The second thing is A lot of industrial distillation uses vapor compression. You basically have a fan on the outlet that sucks the vapor out and compresses it, cooling off the vapor in the saltwater. That requires a little bit of electricity, but you could probably do that with a small fan and a pipe.
That helps you to reuse some of The solar heat but also reduces the pressure in the evaporation vessel. The lower the pressure, the lower the boiling point. And even if you don't reduce the pressure by much, it's still a reduction in boiling point by a little. You could probably do that with a computer fan and some PVC pipe.
there are no chemicals in liquid form in the sea water (except maybe some pollutants) that can be separated through fractional distillation.
@@orionbetelgeuse1937 Why not? And I'm not saying complete separation, I'm saying taking brine and increase the concentration of certain elements.
If there's a variable specific heat between lithium, copper, Bromine, Etc we should expect that at different temperatures there will be a higher concentration of some rather than others.
@@orionbetelgeuse1937 I think you must have misunderstood what I said. Everything is in solution, but before you completely dewater the brine, it's easier to move everything in fractional distillation.
@@philipvecchio3292 do you even know what fractional distillation is?
@@orionbetelgeuse1937 Yes. It's using the temperature differential to split a compound or solution into it's component parts.
Do you? Because you seem like you don't.
I had a good friend who used fractional cooling to isolate nitrogen from air.
Why, do you think it only works with hydrocarbons? It's not a broader technique that could be used for other complex solutions?
It seems like you're just trying to "Well Akshually" but really poorly.
What do you think I'm saying wrong?
I alsways thought it was hard to desalinate water because salt "stuck" to water too much, LOL. Great insight! So, it turned out to be entropy... it's always entropy! Thanks!
Ok I never thought about using a humidifier for the purpose of creating humidity so it would need filtering again. I wonder if a dehumidifier with a filter would do the job. I bought a small tabletop dehumidifier to run while its so hot and the A.C just can't pull enough out of the air. I got 2 cups of water this morning while running overnight. I think people are over looking the power of a dehumidifier to make temperatures more comfortable. 80 degrees with 80% humidity is like being in a soup pot but with less humidity its perfectly comfortable. I hope the portable solar market becomes more affordable since it has the power to save lives!
One thing I loved about this experience was using the atomizer and proving that it's a fundamentally different process from evaporation. Here, you literally break down the salt water solution into tiny droplets that are carried by convection currents or another mechanism, whereas in evaporation, you take out water molecules one by one into the gas phase, so there's no way they'll carry the salt with them. You literally need a cage of water molecules to surround each sodium and chloride ion in the solution, and also, you can't take one out without the other because you'd end up with a charged particle in gaseous phase, which wouldn't make it one millimeter above the water without being attracted by the opposing negative charge they leave behind.
Don't forget that the other end product is an extremely salty brine that is quite poisonous if just dumped back in the ocean en masse. Worth careful planning.
there is actually another low energy method of desalination called "freeze-thaw desalination". Mostly used in chemistry lab setting to purify water from contamination. But works for salt too. It rely on the principle as ice crystal form, it actually push out impurity out of the ice structure. Assuming the freezing rate is no so fast that ice end up forming around the impurity, by freezing, remove the salty water, thawing and refreezing. It purify the water by ice's natural tendency to only form crystal structure around other ice crystal.
One of the main reason why this method is less energy intensive than thermal desalination. One is heat of fusion for water is much smaller than heat of vaporization (334 J/g vs 2260 J/g), so it cost much less energy than boiling water to create equivalent unit of "pure water". Which is also another reason why arctic iceberg is biggest source of fresh water. Unlike reverse osmosis, eventually its membrane get clogged up. And the membrane need to be maintain and clean. Free-thaw-desalination don't have a membrane to maintain. Energy cost wise, theoretically freeze-thaw desalination suppose to be less than reverse osmosis. But real lab engineering result haven't be able to realize that efficiency yet. Operation wise, since freezing work more energy efficient when environmental temperature is cold, this mean at night time when energy price is at its lowest, FTD can operate at its most efficient rate. Double energy bonus right there.
Now come the downside, the rate of freezing is very slow, and you cant freeze too fast either or ice crystal will end up entrap the pollutant. And lack of convection mechanism to transfer heat away mean even though ice have better thermal conductivity than water, it end up being more insulating and slowing down the production rate. So there are two factors limiting production rate and prevent large scale production. Although there are some new research that use pressure to freeze and thaw ice by shifting ice between solid and liquid in the 3 phase diagram. It's suppose to be more energy efficient and faster than just regular freezing. Since you can compress the icy water to help it maintain liquid phase to gain that convection thermal conductivity to get to lower temperature. Then slowly decompress the icy water to form ice. Then keep compress and decompress to maintain the free-thaw purification cycle. As oppose to regular heat pump cycle where heat transfer rate slow dramatically once you enter ice phase. The pressure freeze thaw cycle is faster and less energy intensive per cycle once you get to desired pressure region. Since you only cycle between two very close by pressure states. Plenty of engineering issues still need to be solved. But theoretically it's suppose to be most energy efficient method.
Ultrasonic thingy does not evaporates water, it merely breaks it up into tiny droplets. Remember, water vapor is transparent. The fog you see above boiling water is already condensed vapor.
thank goodness for the desalination at camp lemonnier in djibouti, africa, when i was deployed. a miracle technology but damn expensive and hogged fuel like a tanker aircraft every day hundreds of gallons of fuel to produce it. i was never dehydrated and ironically tasted like from a fresh mountain spring.
From the cool, clear waters of Mount Kerosene
@@michaelre7556 🤣 couldn’t have said it better myself 💯
Well, if they use fuel even in africa, with its abundance in solar energy, you wonder why...
@@michaelre7556 mount dooms more explosive cousin
@@testthewest123 obviously it's costly to get a new solar plant up and running but I'm sure they'll get there.
Desalination will always be hard because of thermodynamics, but as a viewer in our light desalination video pointed out, if we can find ways to make the process faster and diversify the energy input, we can get more fresh water along with other benefits.
Full video on large scale Sun heat trapping please.
Nice. Great idea. It would be cool to see the thermodynamics and economy of it
Venus: Am I a joke to you?
For desalination, the devil in in the details. You want to make sure the intake doesn't suck up aquatic life but the most important part is making sure the waste brine goes in the right place with the proper blending and mixing energy.
11:45 The excessive rain is due to Hunga Tonga Hunga Pai'i, January 2022.
While it was claimed to be an eruption, it was a nuclear detonation as too much energy was released to make it a natural event.
The effects have been lasting for two years, assuming no other events have taken place.
In Sydney the desalinisation plants work when electricity is cheap in the evening and night time. Essentially it is used ot level to level the energy grid at the same tiem as producing water.
this is still quite a naive overview because its not taking into account degradation . salt water is incredibly corrosive and therefore requires stainless steel or resistant coatings which even then needs to be replaced every 5 years , the reverse osmosis membranes degrade in 3 years . We can extend this type of consideration then to the powersupply battery aswell , with 2k cycles , its going to degrade in 3 years , and even the solar panel efficiency degrades by 1% per year ( from 24% efficiency when new ) . the difficulty is not simply the setup that works for short term demonstration , the difficulty is in finding the most efficient setup for the long term .
You were "just" in Panama. That's what my kids laugh at me about. "Oh, he just died" I said two years ago about Oliver Sacks who had died in 2016. It's been raining heavily in Panama for a few weeks now. Granted, your "just" isn't as bad as mine but still... 🤣
haha it reminds me of the Brian Regan bit about fortune tellers ... " I'm sensing your uncle died recently." "Um he died 25 years ago." "THAT Recently?!" haha
@@TwoBitDaVinci 🤣
the best way to do it is put the desalination plant next to an oil refinery or power plant. you need to build a cascading multiflow counterflow spray evaporation towers. this is the same technique that produces instant coffee and powdered milk. you aim to produce crystalized salt with distilled water as a byproduct. you use sea water filtered through a series of gravel and fine sand and possibly a centrifugal separator to eliminate particulate. then the cold water is pumped into the water jacket of the downstream spray tower. this acts as an economizer and preheater. the cold seawater then exits at counterflow to achieve a higher temperature scavenged from the downstream spray tower, it enters the next upstream spray tower. and depending how many stages, you keep doing this and then feed it to the waste heat heat-exchanger. you can then heat it counterflow to any other waste fuel heat generator to increase exit temperature. this heated seawater is then pumped at high pressure to the first stage spray tower thus flash evaporating steam and separating the brine and salt to the bottom. the brine and salt are sent to a dryer separator and the brine is reinjected and heated by the first stage exit steam into the 2nd stage spray tower. then do this in a cascading manner. this will be an efficient way of potable producing water and salt.
The trick is keeping water in the soil. We have a giant sponge we have neglected by not nurturing our trees and plants. we need to start a planetary wide gardening program to repair all the damage. We’ve done by paving roads everywhere and deforesting.
If you pour cool salt water over the top of side of the collector panel before it drains into the salt water pail, the panel will condense more steam to clean water.
Also this preheats the salt water before it goes into the collector so less energy is needed to turn it into steam.
Why energy-intensive desalination? Use a simple (but space-intensive) system to liquefy (condense) the water vapor above the sea (there is plenty of it there) by cooling it. And you have fresh water! Condensation through cooling uses significantly less energy (~1/10) than the currently cheapest desalination. The energy can be generated inexpensively and in an environmentally friendly way by nearby wind farms.
This type of fresh water extraction has not been used to date because energy was cheap and apparently available in unlimited quantities.
I understand fresh water is one of those underpriced and under-appreciated commodities - especially in California.
Imagine you have a barge on the ocean. It’s covered in solar panels. Onboard is a heat pump which warms seawater brine and cools the evaporated water. A vacuum pump depressurizes the tanks, to lower the boiling temperature. You’d need to pump out the brine and the condensate, though you wouldn’t need to pump in the fresh seawater.
This is the most efficient setup I can imagine for a land-based desalination facility, though it may be possible to increase efficiency. On a barge at sea, if one uses solar energy to raise the temperature of the brine, for example. She might also use cool water from deeper in the ocean to condense the evaporated water. Nearly energy-free; only a vacuum pump and two fluid pumps to run.
I’d be interested in donating my time to build a prototype. Maybe a local college would be interested in funding. There’s no patent opportunity here, so no one’s gonna get rich. But creating and manufacturing the equipment which solves the water problems in California could prove to be lucrative.
Worth a phone call at least?
Joe
If you took a metal tank and screwed a desalination filter into one end you could sink it in the ocean until the ocean pressure alone pushed fresh water through the filter.
Being simplistic, if you used pumps and pipes to get that fresh water in the tank to shore the tank would keep refilling itself until the filter clogged with no energy cost and no concentrated brine.
The cost of pumping the fresh water back to the surface is the cost but pumps driven by waves easily address that.
Combining offshore desalination with offshore energy infrastructure, habitat restoration, food production and carbon storage can easily make these project profitable while addressing serious issues.
Combining the synergies of
That sounds like a great idea
Its just a matter of investment. Modern flash desal.plants can produce up to 3.8 giga litres per day. Comparable to a medium sized river. The capital imvestment needed (nuhclear power plant plus desal.plant) for this river is about $20bn.
The energy requirement for reverse osmosis isn't the only issue, RO requires only a few kWh per cubic meter of water, while not nothing, it is in itself not that much of a problem, except when absurd quantities of water is needed, like when irrigating deserts to grow plants that requires a lot of water. Other issues is the filters needed, and that the water doesn't become absolutely clean. The higher salinity the source water is, and the lower salinity required, the bigger filters and more energy is needed. Again, a salinity low enough for drinking water is one thing, but water for irrigation in areas that doesn't any significant rainfall requires very low salinity to prevent too fast salinization of the soil.
There's an other option, that I think is more interesting, and that's vacuum distillation. For water in a "vacuum" the actual temperature becomes the boiling point, which means very small temperature differences, within normal ambient temperatures, can be utilized to distill water, like just the temperature difference between something in the sun and in the shade, or night and day, absolute temperature and wet bulb temperature and so on.
Vacuum distillation is widely used, but mostly to enhance efficiency/output of distillation driven by high energy inputs in case of thermal desalination systems. But, it wouldn't be difficult to design a system that don't require high grade energy for the distillation process. A lack of water usually means large difference in temperature between day and night, which is great for "free energy" vacuum distillation.
The ultrasonic system does not cause evaporation, it causes aerosolization, i.e., it makes little droplets of the fluid including anything dissolved in it. This is why I don't use ultrasonic humidifiers. My tap water is hard water and it deposits hard water scale on everything in the room including the interior of my lungs. Maybe not a health threat (I don't know) but definitely something I want to avoid.
There was an Interesting breakthrough in MIT using aquaphobic membranes, where only the water vapor could penetrate the membrane, which allowed more water harvest with less power use
Hey Ricky, you need to spend 10 or $20 on a TDS/condutcivity meter, so you can measure salt ppm in supply and distillate sides.
Question, also a potential project for you to try: What if you made a black box, like a solar cooker, kinda like how you did here, but instead of using glass to condense the water, what if you put in a metal mesh that was externally cooled, angled towards your collection area? The coolness of the metal would cause the water to condense on its surface, and gravity would pull the water down along the mesh. How much energy would it take to cool the mesh to a condensable temp? How much of a temperature difference would you need? Is it more or less effective than the methods you tried here?
Desalination poses problems outside of energy use. Where do you put all the salt once you've pulled the water from it? You can't simply super saturate the area outside a desalination plant. You can certainly use it for solar salt batteries but that demand isn't constant.
Why not just dump it back into the ocean ?
Go right back in the ocean. It doesnt increase ocean salt levels at all, but it does create a toxic area right where you dump it unfortunately because it is a higher concentration right there before it can be dissolved and carried away into the greater ocean.
Dumping the brine a sufficient distance off the coast should easily mitigate any environmental risks.
Smart plants however will reuse the brine by evaporating or re-separating the wastewater and using the remaining salts for commercial, industrial or consumer purposes.
and that separated water? Seems to me like it could be used as gray water for irrigation.
The truth is nothing in our world need go to waste. Everything has a second or third use. Almost everything can be recycled at least once.
it just takes people using their common sense and willing to invest in these processes.
We could use the salt for all the same reasons we currently dig salt out of the ground for and then just dig less out of the ground.
@@cmrdekyes but we in no way use that much salt. Many of these countries harvest salt this way, but do not store the water.
But salt isn’t like nuclear waste. These arid countries have a lot of desert.
Just bury it or pile it up. Make stones. Make a salt pyramid. Doesn’t matter.
My town reuse our drinking water 15 times before we drink it, beat that if you can! 🇸🇪
A good video, you kept the explanation short, and went right to the various systems. You mentioned energy requirements to evaporate the water, or to pump it through the filters. Solar PV should eliminate most of the cost, since once it's in place it starts giving back. even solar thermal is mostly free since we use the sun's energy.
Just read an article today about a start up, they are using small diameter tubes, heating the top with waste heat, and keeping the bottom part cool, they can generate 600 gallons a day. They will be building a test plant in Tonga.
one idea i had about solar desalination. what if we piped salt water from the oceans to man made salt-water lakes. if we prevent the water from seeping into the ground , eventually the water cycle would naturally create more fresh water elsewhere (via evaporation and rain). it's not a direct method, but it might help in large desert areas with a lot of open space
Who would pay for this?
what about stacking processes, if the 'steam' from the ultrasonic method is less salty, it should take less energy to process that product.
True!
You could also use excess solar to may Hydrogen and then you could desalinate water anytime you wanted!
problem is that a hydrogen electrolysis plant should run at best 24/7 to be economical viable. It makes no sense to shut them down every night. This is why most hydrogen generation plants that are in the planing phase today use wind energy as primary source, one example are the projects in Newfoundland with plans to run the electrolysis at least 5000 hours per year
For solar desalination, try separating your heating and condensing chambers.
Direct solar desalination should be more efficient than electric powered thermal desalination as the solar photons help energize and separate the ions. Simpler direct solar setups are also more accessible in much of the developing world (Southeast Asia, Polynesia, Melanesia, Africa, indigenous tribes and religious groups living traditional lifestyles throughout the world, etc.) that doesn't' yet have easy access to reliable electricity.
If we can use nuclear energy options to provide energy to the desalination process then we wouldn't have an energy demand issue
How many nuclear reactors are employed for desalination around the world?
All nuclear powered submarines use this to supply water to the crew from my understanding so I think it's a good idea given proper safety measures are in place
@@josdesouzaall nuclear powered submarines supply water to the crew this way from my understanding
@@josdesouzaI mean maybe none right now but does that matter? If they need on-site energy generation that would certainly be one good way.
This tech will be more and more needed in the future,
Making sugar in a vacuum. Exponential tendency of water boiling reduction from atmospheric pressure drop.
Very cool and very much needed for salty coastal cities around the world. For arid interior places? We need to focus on water recycling technology that recycles sewage water into potable water again... Like I believe Phoenix uses to add hydration to their region... Calgary could probably use that as well after their main water line collapsed limiting capacity to 25% of the cities regular needs for 1.6 million people... And the Calgary Stampede which takes place in about 2 weeks...
dubai had a desalination plant producing 1000 litres for 2.9kwh, powered by solar in the day (natural gas + nuclear at night)
What about freezing the water? That also removes the salt.
Excellent point about shifting demand, but in addition we should ban non-agricultural irrigation. That means watering yards. Plant plants that can survive natural rainfall levels, or plant agricultural products. That last one could have some fringe benefits.
Or move to a region that has water rather than doing this bizzare thing where everyone tries to live where there are resource limitations and pikachu faces when they notice a shortage.
San Diego gets half of its fresh water from the Colorado basin, which is in trouble.
Regarding the photo molecular effect does this work with radioactive radiation too?
I was thinking about desalination by heat from transformers or cooling stations from power plants or even large Radioactive thermal generators.
Solar Still was made as old as time, but we know it's slow to quench a village.
How much can you save on the heating process when lowering pressure? How low could you go, could you get the water to boil without heat source?
You could have used the cool section of the heat pump as a condenser. Not quite ultrasonic but you may be into something with reducing pressure to reduce boiling point or localised pressure reduction perhaps coupled with the heat-pump itself which also uses pressure & state-change.
Could a chemical (another salt) be added to the saline to compete with the existing salt & ease the release? I think there's more to be looked into here.
Waters boiling point is greatly reduced at low pressures, even down to room temperature. A vacuum pump on a water container discharging through a cooling coil would need little to no heat to work. You should even be able to use the waste heat from the pump. I'm a little surprised the ultrasonic didn't work... it should be able to be made to work. I wonder what the actual salt concentration was.
I think using the excess energy produced by renewables would be put to good use generating heat. Grid scale batteries, yeeesh. We already have had 2 fires here in Aust letting out a cocktail of poisonous fumes in grid scale battery installs.
If you need heat I can think of at least a dozen or more industries, that have excessive heat, to use for desalination.
There is more to it than that also. The water has to be filtered before entering the desalination plant. There is a brine solution left over that is waste water that you have to get rid of after desalination. you can't just dump it directly into the water way because that effects the chemistry of the natural area. You have warm water afterwards which is great for bacteria and other stuff to grow in so you have to make sure it's clean. And you have to add minerals and other things back into the water. Elon Musk was saying that it's cheap and easy. He doesn't know anything.
The waist brine can be cooled in large outer air tanks, evaporated, and then the waste salt can be reused for industrial or consumer purposes.
Alternatively the waste brine can be dumped several or more miles off the coastline where it can instantly be diluted by natural mixing. Obviously dumping it at the waterline is bad and should never be done.
So the solutions are there and they are simple and beneficial. Why they're not being employed yet I don't know.
You're brainstorming and looking for good ideas but that's only the first step. You have to do detail design and look at numbers eventually.
The amount of salt you are producing is probably going to be too much. There is still going to be waste. You're going to move water several miles off of the coastline, and pumping brine or shipping brine that far is costly. I'm not sure of the viscosity of it or if it's more corrosive to the pipes. Do the pipes have to be cleaned? When you're pumping a brine the pressure can make the salt condense. Nothing is simple. Why don't you just dehumidify water out of the air at your house? @@YourCapyBro_windows95_3DPipes
It's easy for Elon , all he does is open his wallet get the best people for the job 😆
@@SlackersIndustry Big check tomorrow!
I could be mistaken, but I thought thermal desalination along the coast used cold deep-ocean water to cool down the steam ? Maybe some off-shore wind and wave power for electricity, and like you said run the desalination only when there's sufficient wind power. Or maybe use reverse osmosis instead of thermal process ?
Side question - how much power from power company is needed to run a Tesla type super-charger - a half or whole megawatt ? Would a residential home even be allowed to use that much power ?
Can you rerun the solar distill experiment for a day and weigh the amount of water you got? And what was the area of the solar collection? I'd like to see some real numbers.
California should set up a pipe to pump the excess water back to the Colorado River under a hydro net metering agreement.
Graphene filters + perovskite solar PV cells = infinite water for almost £0.
wouldn't it be amazing if that was the sort of thing we were investing in?
@@TwoBitDaVinci Absolutely, but I think we'd need a societal technocracy for it to happen! Or at least any form of government that's looking further ahead than their five year term :P
Hey Ricky, why don’t you do an episode on rainwater collection? Global warming increases rainfall which can be collected for immediate use and/or redirected to replenish the water table.
In Australia most houses in rural areas have collection barrels.
Its only hard for people who can't for example adequately seal a box.
What about the green Laser from your last video? Wouldn't that require less energy?
I was wondering if mold is any issue over time with that system?
With sodium batteries coming, this could become something getting significant R&D.
We need a photomolecular effect demonstration!
Ricky, those microporous filters need a back flow of water to remove the salts, last time I had anything to do with them; how do these flush the salt and recharge? It wasn't just the energy it takes, it was a portion of the clean water ultimately produced in the past.
yeah that's a great point! this is why RO really sucks for homes, because it wastes so much water. but for a desal plant... that's a steady flow system, it's not as bad, is that fair to say?
In your animation, the Na and Cl atoms separate when dissolved in water. Does that mean it is not really salt at that point?
If it were free Sodium the sodium would be grabbing the oxygen off the water molecule and release pure Hydrogen and likely be explosive. Since we dont have explosions all over the ocean it is indeed still salt NaCl
@13:37 Entropy is not the measure of how disordered a system is. It is the measure of how homogeneous a system is. Having the salt ions distributed thru-out the water is more homogeneous than having the salt in crystals separated from the water.
I’m confused why you can’t use glass and mirrors like they did in ancient times for ‘death rays’ to desolate water with the power of the sun.
A "few" years ago I watched this documentary about stone pots built in such a way that people could leave it in the desert heat all day and they would have a few liters of fresh water in the evening. Ever since I've been wondering: can't they dig a canal from the sea straight into the desert and somehow do the same on a larger scale? Disclaimer: I have a master in sociology so nothing that comes even remotely close STEM, so forgive me if I say the most stupid things.
Look up "solar dome Saudi Arabia desalination plant". That is using large canals to send water in to the evaporation dome.
You can also just have a desalination plant next to the ocean and use a much smaller pipe to deliver fresh water.
As others said here, that idea has actually been put into practice already, and, to @-whackd's credit, it does make a lot more sense to desalinate first, especially since salt water is denser than freshwater.
That said, one thing I always love is seeing people from wildly different backgrounds pitching ideas. STEMs alone won't fix the world's problems. Sometimes all it takes is a fresh take on a problem from a different perspective and we can solve a decades-old problem. I encourage you to always bring your best foot forward in every scenario, you could help change the world. You don't have to be a wiz at math for that.
@@Israel_Two_Bit 💚
The NEOM solar domes for desalinization seem promising
Almost no information in this video that grade school students didn't already learn.
Oneka technologies makes fresh water using waves to power the process! Please Ricky ,Check out all the innovation going on in desalination , not just heat?
6:00 You can't do this with a heat pump, the temp is too high, if they could deliver 3-5X efficiency >100c we would make generators powered by the heat in the local environment.
How
About lowering the air pressure in the chamber? That should reduce the energy necesary to maje the Water boild. Of course you would nedd a dual chamber to make a vacuum and then open the Water, as the vacuum is fill with vapor the sakt stays in the inner chamber... Maybe it will work
Great video. I'm curious about advancements in membranes including ones such as Perforene which is made out of graphene. Increasing the efficiency of reverse osmosis membranes to use less energy and decreasing the cost of said membranes presents a valueable opportunity to desalinate water affordably.
interesting pursuit of ideas thanks
Would have liked to know the specs of the EcoFlow and the Battery Chemistry in it (LFP/ NMC Batteries?).
《 Arrays of nanodiodes promise full conservation of energy》
A simple rectifier crystal can, iust short of a replicatable long term demonstration of a powerful prototype, almost certainly filter the random thermal motion of electrons or discrete positiive charged voids called holes so the electric current flowing in one direction predominates. At low system voltage a filtrate of one polarity predominates only a little but there is always usable electrical power derived from the source, which is Johnson Nyquest thermal electrical noise. This net electrical filtrate can be aggregated in a group of separate diodes in consistent alignment parallel creating widely scalable electrical power. As the polarity filtered electrical energy is exported, the amount of thermal energy in the group of diodes decreases. This group cooling will draw heat in from the surrounding ambient heat at a rate depending on the filtering rate and thermal resistance between the group and ambient gas, liquid, or solid warmer than absolute zero. There is a lot of ambient heat on our planet, more in equatorial dry desert summer days and less in polar desert winter nights.
Refrigeration by the principle that energy is conserved should produce electricity instead of consuming it.
Focusing on explaining the electronic behavior of one composition of simple diode, a near flawless crystal of silicon is modified by implanting a small amount of phosphorus on one side from a ohmic contact end to a junction where the additive is suddenly and completely changed to boron with minimal disturbance of the crystal pattern. The crystal then continues to another ohmic contact.
A region of high electrical resistance forms at the junction in this type of diode when the phosphorous near the ĵunction donates electrons that are free to move elsewhere while leaving phosphorus ions held in the crystal while the boron donates a hole which is similalarly free to move. The two types of mobile charges mutually clear each other away near the junction leaving little electrical conductivity. An equlibrium width of this region is settled between the phosphorus, boron, electrons, and holes. Thermal noise is beyond steady state equlibrium. Thermal noise transients where mobile electrons move from the phosphorus added side to the boron added side ride transient extra conductivity so they are filtered into the external circuit. Electrons are units of electric current. They lose their thermal energy of motion and gain electromotive force, another name for voltage, as they transition between the junction and the array electrical tap.
Aloha
If light evaporates water, why not just blast it with super bright light and collect the runoff?
You neglect to discuss the most difficult part of desalination, the brining Wastewater that cannot be pumped into the ocean because it will increase the salinity and cannot be disposed of on the land. There are some industries that can use this Briny water. This is why I watched your video because I was hoping you had new Industries to utilize the Wastewater and particulate. Of course it takes energy to run a decentralization plan but what do you do with the waste? An island in the Canary Islands that has a constant Westerly wind blowing off of Africa has a massive amount of wind turbines and some title electricity generation that powers a desalination plant and pumps the water up into their reservoirs and legs. Even more genius the pipes leading down to their Farms and cities have hydroelectric generators so they produce energy on both ends. It's absolutely brilliant and we need more of this. Especially in California we could fill all of our reservoirs and lakes in the mountains everyday for free. But what do we do with the Briny wastewater?
I remember that Elon Musk told Bill Maher desalination is cheap on his show last year. But later on, I read that some scientists wrote it’s not really cheap like Elon Musk said on X. What do you think about that?🤔 The comparison between them could be the operating cost only!🤔🤔🤔
Your other video about a recent discovery regarding water evaporation would be a good additive to this scenario! >............:)
We ran out of time to test it but that’s coming soon!!
@TwoBitDaVinci looking forward to seeing that! Keep 'em coming! :)
Great episode, I wonder how we can better monetize the resulting brine, help cover the costs of added solar/wind/wave generation/renewable power. This application make more sense by the cost , within 1 mile, wind and wave Generation power can also be harvested.
a more in depth video sounds great.
I would think if they just wanted to dump it, provided they went far enough off the coast to do so, it shouldn't harm the surrounding ecosystem, however if they wanted to reuse the products I don't see why they just wouldn't allow the water to evaporate and reuse the salt for commercial, industrial or consumer purposes.
There are always purposes for salt. If it's purified it can be consumed. In it's original states I'm sure there are plenty of industrial uses. Not to mention roads in the winter time in cold climates.
Also, I would think there should be a way to capture whatever water was removed from the waste brine if this process is used. Seems like it would be good for irrigation.
It may cost a bit more up front to have these subsequent stages of separation but seems to me like it would be worth it for the usefulness of the end products.
@@YourCapyBro_windows95_3DPipes
Good points, the brine contains sodium, magnesium, lithium, even uranium and other metals. If processing is adjunct to the desalination plant and brine is processed in proximity, I’d be curious to see numbers around the return on investment.
There is some evidence from past trials that it tends to be more impactful, creates saturation over a given area towards a dead zone on the sea floor, that would my area of concern. If I’m not mistaken, Ricky might have made a video about this. Hmmm, I’d have to check.
The aliens know how to desalinate for free.
What's the average cali water tax (gpt did not have a good answer)? How does that compare to fuel tax? Water is body fuel - perhaps it should be taxed accordingly to build those plants?
"salt left behind and requires clean up" don't you mean free salt!
Need a home unit! Thanks
Does anyone use vacuum to reduce the boiling point?
You have apparently never used an ultrasonic humidifier. Not surprising since you live in San Diego. I won't use them because they leave a white powder dust all over your house as the water dries and leaves the residue floating in the air to settle out. Pretty sure it is not good on your lungs.
Regarding your sponsor, EcoFlow... I notice you don't ever mention the actual energy storage in kWh, or time that you can run the stated loads. It seems deceptive to only state the maximum instantaneous power output without total energy storage.
Example: a 4000w load running for 1hr equates to 4kWh of storage.
When I am explaining off grid power systems to potential clients, I give them ALL the data, suggest you and EvoFlow do the same.
I mentioned all of that ,its 4kWh ... apologies if I didn't mention it at that particular moment. but noted and we'll keep this in mind for the future! Thank you!
What if you reversed the system. Membrane at the bottom and pouring the salt water on top. I wonder how deep the tank would have to be to create enough pressure from gravity.
Read Brad Lancasters Harvesting Rainwater books. We need to save the rain for a sunny day.
Weird ideas. What if we electrolysis the water to O and H and then burn it back to water. Use that burn to generate some of that power back. What would be this setups efficiency and draw backs?
The process is old school, sorry. Let me give you something to think about. How does the ocean evaporate by the sun? Not by boiling the water. Hint: light spectrum. Different technique, less power, less energy
what about using desalination to increase salt mining production?
8:41 Is there any water down there? Maybe I need new glasses, bc it looks empty to me.