Why Aren't Desalination Plants EVERYWHERE?

[@TwoBitDaVinci]

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[@robertbe2520]

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!!

[@fusifase20]

Nah yall have greed problems down there!

[@3komma141592653]

Yes, using excess energy is a good way. However, when you invest a lot of money into a desalination plant, you want to run it 24/7 to make your investment financially viable, so there is that. But on the electricity market, you can get paid, to not use the electricity you were normally using. That only works for big consumers, but that is a way to balance out the network and make up for the loss of not operating it. So it could be a win-win. And just like you said, in some countries the pipe network is so bad, 50 % of the water just gets lost. Like UK or Italy for example. And agriculture is also often to wasteful. We need to fix that first.

[@batmandeltaforce]

We recently learned that Light, evaporates water 4 times faster than Heat... at the same energy level.

[@Wolframandheart]

I seen a video explaining that too

[@batmandeltaforce]

@@Wolframandheart KrAzY huh, and we thought we were smart:)

[@ipp_tutor]

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

[@jamessellards7157]

I watched that as well, and was gonna comment the same.

[@iivin4233]

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.

[@keenheat3335]

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.

[@IndigenousEarthling101]

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.

[@Israel_Two_Bit]

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.

[@philipvecchio3292]

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.

[@philipvecchio3292]

@@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.

[@philipvecchio3292]

@@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]

@@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?

[@philipvecchio3292]

@@orionbetelgeuse1937Are you intentionally trying to misunderstand what I'm saying? I wasn't saying dewatering using fractional distillation, you can do that with just plain old distillation. Fractional distillation is taking seawater brine and adding heat to stratify the brine and take isolate useful materials by density. This is well known. There's an industry video on KZbin from the 80s that talks about fractional Distillation for isolating materials from brine. After the fractional distillation you still have Brine, there is still water. You take one brine with lots of minerals and you sort it out into multiple brines with only a few minerals. You can decide if you want to dewater or use reverse osmosis or further thermal cracking to select for the elements. that you want after that. What are you talking about? Are you intentionally adding in things I didn't say to Keep you from having to admit you were wrong? I think I specifically said the fractional distillation had to happen while everything was still suspended in water. So either you didn't read what I said or you don't know what you're talking about. And that's okay! Do some reading, now you know.

[@philipvecchio3292]

@@orionbetelgeuse1937 I think that's what you think it is, but that's only one application of fractional Distillation.

[@krobbins8395]

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!

[@josdesouza]

It's hard to compete against the free and abundant energy of the sun.

[@KevinT3141]

Big oil lobbyists: Hold my beer...

[@testthewest123]

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.

[@dianapennepacker6854]

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!"

[@KevinT3141]

@@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!

[@aryabrown7904]

Quaise is coming.

[@mikeylicksit]

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.

[@michaelre7556]

From the cool, clear waters of Mount Kerosene

[@mikeylicksit]

@@michaelre7556 🤣 couldn’t have said it better myself 💯

[@testthewest123]

Well, if they use fuel even in africa, with its abundance in solar energy, you wonder why...

[@xanderjames8682]

​@@michaelre7556 mount dooms more explosive cousin

[@YourCapyFrenBigly_3DPipes1999]

​@@testthewest123 obviously it's costly to get a new solar plant up and running but I'm sure they'll get there.

[@ipp_tutor]

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!

[@NoHandleToSpeakOf]

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.

[@andiralosh2173]

I was thinking the same thing BUT, perhaps this could be a step to increase the surface area for solar a evaporator

[@JoelReid]

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.

[@Tools2Survive]

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.

[@Averagesasquatch]

​@@orionbetelgeuse1937and then use the pickles to create electricity?

[@williamgwyntreharne9966]

Why not dry the brine and dump it in disused salt mines?

[@lifeisgood5794]

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. My wish is that states with coastlines would invest in fresh water.

[@YourCapyFrenBigly_3DPipes1999]

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.

[@I2oseTheory]

Full video on large scale Sun heat trapping please.

[@ipp_tutor]

Nice. Great idea. It would be cool to see the thermodynamics and economy of it

[@apis8020]

Venus: Am I a joke to you?

[@MysteriousSoulreaper]

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.

[@ChristIsKing4ever-l9w]

Why not just dump it back into the ocean ?

[@LordSaliss]

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.

[@YourCapyFrenBigly_3DPipes1999]

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.

[@cmrdek]

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.

[@TheBooban]

@@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.

[@cheerdiver]

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.

[@ericmaclaurin8525]

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

[@YourCapyFrenBigly_3DPipes1999]

That sounds like a great idea

[@jefferybezos9098]

2:50 "i was only looking at half of the picture", no u were looking at a different almost unrelated picture. I'm sorry but your initial ramble about bonds is literally useless, desalination has nothing to do with bonds between water and salt or between Na and Cl. Evaporating water: that is breaking the intermolecular bonds especially hydrogen bonds present in water which are the strongest non covalent bonds (why water has high latent heat of evaporation as mentioned). the salt only makes it a bit harder to evaporate because it adds vander wals forces (another type of non covelant bond) that also need to be overcome. also it adds some internal pressure which makes it harder for vapor to form a bubble and escape (boiling). so basically salty water takes even more energy to boil and evaporate than pure water but nothing to do with the things mentioned. thats what i understand btw feel free to correct me maybe im missing something. good vid tho overall.

[@Israel_Two_Bit]

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.

[@WTH1812]

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.

[@Badams814]

what about stacking processes, if the 'steam' from the ultrasonic method is less salty, it should take less energy to process that product.

[@TwoBitDaVinci]

True!

[@JJSmith1100]

What about freezing the water? That also removes the salt.

[@ulrichraymond8372]

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.

[@bobnomura2068]

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 ?

[@ccatarinajm7114]

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... 🤣

[@TwoBitDaVinci]

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

[@ccatarinajm7114]

@@TwoBitDaVinci 🤣

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.

[@joweb1320]

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.

[@macjonte]

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?

[@ShawnHCorey]

@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.

[@zzzzzzz8473]

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 .

[@55Ramius]

I was wondering if mold is any issue over time with that system?

[@gptiede]

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.

[@goldenegg1063]

I realised the same with a little ultrasonic mist generator . I suddenly noticed the table all around it had white crystally dust all over where the mist cascaded over the edge

[@ScottAtwood]

Another major issue with desalination is that it produces concentrated brine as a byproduct, and disposing of that brine in a way that doesn’t damage ecosystems is a real challenge.

[@jimgraham6722]

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.

[@jperez7893]

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.

[@Xero1of1]

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?

[@GMaker0507]

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

[@fayebird1808]

Who would pay for this?

[@fredericrike5974]

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.

[@TwoBitDaVinci]

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?

[@NixonAngelo]

I've heard a big issue it's the concentrated slurry byproduct. Can the minerals be extracted efficiently enough?

[@TheGaussFan]

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.

[@fishyerik]

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.

[@mxguy2438]

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.

[@ryanatkins5736]

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

[@gsestream]

whats a better heat capture medium than water, sand or molten salt. paraffin wax, also in piston ice engines, as wax based steam type engine.

[@daveh6356]

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.

[@paulwatson6013]

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.

[@thewatersavior]

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?

[@econativo]

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

[@kennethng8346]

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.

[@Soothsayer210]

Would have liked to know the specs of the EcoFlow and the Battery Chemistry in it (LFP/ NMC Batteries?).

[@______IV]

8:41 Is there any water down there? Maybe I need new glasses, bc it looks empty to me.

[@ClashStats]

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.

[@blipco5]

San Diego gets half of its fresh water from the Colorado basin, which is in trouble.

[@NachtmahrNebenan]

What about the green Laser from your last video? Wouldn't that require less energy?

[@Sacto1654]

They need to figure out two things: how to dispose of the minerals removed during the desalination process and how to power these desalinization plants. The mineral part could be very valuable because besides sodium and chlorine, there are a lot of other elements that could be extracted out from seawater.

[@lnwolf41]

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.

[@urbanstrencan]

This tech will be more and more needed in the future,

[@-whackd]

dubai had a desalination plant producing 1000 litres for 2.9kwh, powered by solar in the day (natural gas + nuclear at night)

[@HobbesNJoe]

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

[@stewartpalmer2456]

For solar desalination, try separating your heating and condensing chambers.

[@arkatub]

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.

[@djbassay2k5]

what about using desalination to increase salt mining production?

[@SmoothLounge7]

We have cruise ships that can hold 10,000 people but doesn’t have problem desalinating water, neither does are Navel vessels, or even are private yacht owners? So why can’t we do the same and use our solar power systems to run it?

[@ZdeněkMotl]

Thank you for the video, but honestly I thought that you will get more into issues with leftover salt and ecologic problems with osmos type of desalination. I am still not sure that we are doing everything right.

[@henriknutsson8500]

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?

[@ccatarinajm7114]

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.

[@LordSaliss]

Look up "solar dome Saudi Arabia desalination plant". That is using large canals to send water in to the evaporation dome.

[@-whackd]

You can also just have a desalination plant next to the ocean and use a much smaller pipe to deliver fresh water.

[@Israel_Two_Bit]

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.

[@ccatarinajm7114]

@@Israel_Two_Bit 💚

[@MyWasteOfTime]

You could also use excess solar to may Hydrogen and then you could desalinate water anytime you wanted!

[@johgude5045]

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

[@nathanshearer30]

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.

[@kengrow3992]

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.

[@TheMattB1984]

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.

[@VPWedding]

In your animation, the Na and Cl atoms separate when dissolved in water. Does that mean it is not really salt at that point?

[@MA_KA_PA_TIE]

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

[@marcusmostmans9964]

How can I send you some picture of our development?

[@mxguy2438]

Does anyone use vacuum to reduce the boiling point?

[@phyarth8082]

Making sugar in a vacuum. Exponential tendency of water boiling reduction from atmospheric pressure drop.

[@EMPTYJ4RH34D]

Nice video, but I wonder why there is no talk about freezing water to purefy it. On my understanding the biggest waterfall in the world is underneith the southpole. The water freezes agains the pole ice and the salt does not. Due the salt water being heavier then normel water it drops down to the bottem and then spreads out over the ocean floor. That would actualy mean the ice of the southpole is not salt. And again, I am not a scientist and do not have any expierience with the southpole but if this is true it could be a nice follow-up on this video on why we do not use that technology .

[@IndigenousEarthling101]

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.

[@sourpmart]

Need a home unit! Thanks

[@AndrewOlinek]

If you need heat I can think of at least a dozen or more industries, that have excessive heat, to use for desalination.

[@stickynorth]

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...

[@benmcreynolds8581]

If we can use nuclear energy options to provide energy to the desalination process then we wouldn't have an energy demand issue

[@josdesouza]

How many nuclear reactors are employed for desalination around the world?

[@69boony]

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

[@69boony]

​@@josdesouzaall nuclear powered submarines supply water to the crew this way from my understanding

[@YourCapyFrenBigly_3DPipes1999]

​@@josdesouzaI mean maybe none right now but does that matter? If they need on-site energy generation that would certainly be one good way.

[@CharlesBrown-xq5ug]

《 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

[@michaelharrison7072]

It will be in populated drier areas

[@nindoninshu]

how about some ultraviolet laser separation 🤔

[@Servant_of_Christ]

My town reuse our drinking water 15 times before we drink it, beat that if you can! 🇸🇪

[@garychaiken808]

Great job. Thank you 😊

[@andrewday3206]

The NEOM solar domes for desalinization seem promising

[@arrowghost]

Solar Still was made as old as time, but we know it's slow to quench a village.

[@iivin4233]

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.

[@willykang1293]

Was it the article I read from MIT journals few months ago…?🤔

[@flutieflambert]

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.

[@atlantasailor1]

In Australia most houses in rural areas have collection barrels.

[@phanikumar949]

Would like to know more

[@kens8903]

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.

[@YagneshD]

LTTD plant (Low-temperature thermal desalination) cost effective

[@davidhorizon8401]

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.

[@Halcon_Sierreno]

Lots of problems have easy solutions but people would rather struggle needlessly.

[@GoodEnoughVenson_sigueacristo]

We need a photomolecular effect demonstration!

[@andrewsomerville5772]

Almost no information in this video that grade school students didn't already learn.

[@ajnasreddin]

Why didn't you touch on the negative side of desalination? It's not such a great solution when you look at the pollutants associated with it. For example, the brine created has a negative impact on the marine environment where the salt is dumped back into the sea - so much that dead zones can be created. Biocides are often used to keep keep pipes clean of organic marine growth - and that can also be a killer.