Salt to fresh water this may be a breakthrough

Tony Bev · Guru

Salt to fresh water this may be a breakthrough

LLD · Guru

Also used in areas of low rainfall but heavy dew. The impressive solar desalination plant is at Port Augusta and used for hydroponic vegetables.

Yuglamron · Guru

Sounds very impressive, But what happens to the residue. You will never get all of the H2O out of any salty water and the residue is of a very high salinity afterwards. So high in fact it is a pollutant in itself.

They never tell you about the effects at the desalination plants where the High Salinity residue is just returned to the sea where it has a huge impact on the sea life of all sorts.

So if you have a container sized plant out in the country, what do you do with the H.S.Brine?

Certainly no good for the land to irrigate or would we have dams full of the stuff. Like the Mine Tailing lagoons full of Arsenic and Heavy metals.

Izabarack · Guru

Yuglamron wrote:
what do you do with the H.S.Brine?
Certainly no good for the land to irrigate or would we have dams full of the stuff.

The brine is sold on for a healthy profit and is in high demand.

Neighbour was recently involved in a water clean up process west of Brissy. The water processing has been done on this site for at least 6 years. Four dams, total area of 1.5 by 1.1 kilometers, up to 15 metres deep from drilling and Fracking processes. The cleaned up water is a problem to get rid of. Too pure to put in local creeks as it kills the aquatic life, so only a small amount is released at a time. Local farmers will have it if the company pipes it to them. Not good for crops until the cleaned up water sits on the ground long enough to pick up minerals and salts the crops can use.

The methane from the process I know of is cleaned up, compressed to about 6000 PSI and then used in a gas over diesel engine in mine trucks. The CO2 recovered in the methane clean up process becomes Dry Ice and on sold.

The solar still process has been in use for lots of years but not much use to people who live in Walgett, for example, is the rivers are dry and there is no contaminated or dirty water available to be cleaned up.

Iza

Yuglamron · Guru

We learn something new everyday. Thank you for the further information.

Extraordinary Rendition · Veteran Member

It would be usefull to have a small scale desal device to get potable water out of smelly brackish creeks or estuarine waters. Sea water, even better, but a machine like that might be able to recycle your onboard water.