Time for Desal in Cal?

If you have cheap electricity and somewhere to dump the brine then a city has to do what it must to keep those toilets flushing.

Maybe it is time that the residents of California rethink their circumstance and talk about why the pioneers built all those dams that have been and still are being destroyed.

You know, the ones that used to keep a backup supply of water for times of drought and provide irrigation for growing cheap food. (That other critical item required for human existance.)

That's one solution. I think most cities in the West get their water from reservoirs anyway. They're just a few big reservoirs instead of a bunch of little ones. I heard a couple years ago that LA is rebuilding their main pipeline to one of the city's primary reservoirs to increase the flow. Something unreasonably huge sounding, like 20 ft diameter.

Each dam, large or small, impacts the environment and requires infrastructure.

The best approach is likely to be "all of the above," with conservation emphasized. Water conservation seems to be more effective than energy conservation. In the latter, we just seem to find more uses for the energy we have, and don't save much. Whereas water conservation does seem to make the supply stretch farther.

I agree. Desalination solves a couple of alleged problems; rising sea levels and water shortages in CA and other coastal areas. (Although I don't understand why droughts and water shortages should surprise anyone in a state that is geologically a desert).

Anyway, desalination costs are always the issue and that got me thinking about the thousands of U.S. Navy ships in mothballs. Each is equipped with evaporators that can produce thousands of gallons of potable water from seawater daily. Why not tie up, or anchor a few near selected coastal cities, fire up the evaporators and pipe the water inland? Might be a reasonable short term solution while permanent large scale desalination plants are built.

What they need is water price controls....Every time a drought hits and water prices start to rise, somebody starts building a desalination plant....then it rains, the per gal price for water then drops making the desalination plant's water non-price competitive....

"

Restarting Desalination Plant Would Cost $20 Million

Santa Barbara Plant in Mothballs, Not Considered for Use in Current Drought"

http://www.keyt.com/news/city-says-restarting-santa-barbara-desalination-plant-will-cost-20million/24062390

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24993601/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more

I would hope that the brine is not dumped back into the ocean, but rather mined for it's content. I remember a while back a company was cost effectively extracting lithium for batteries by using seawater but don't know if they were using distillation or desalination as part of the process. The idea of directly driving vacuum distillation from wind turbines seems appealing rather than converting the kinetic energy to electric and then back to kinetic to run a pump. Perhaps hydraulic motors would be the most efficient way to drive the process.

According to this website, 70% of the world's lithium, which is around 100,000 metric tons per year, comes from brine...blurb

"Most of the known supply of lithium is in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Australia and China. The supply is ample and concerns of global shortages are speculative, at least for the moment. It takes 750 tons of brine, the base of lithium, and 24 months of preparation to get one ton of lithium in Latin America. Lithium can also be recycled an unlimited number of times, and 20 tons of spent Li-ion batteries yield one ton of lithium. This will help the supply, but recycling can be more expensive than harvesting new supply through mining.

Named after the Greek word "lithos" meaning "stone," lithium is inexpensive. The raw material costs a fraction of one cent per watt, or less than 0.1 percent of the battery cost. A $10,000 battery for a plug-in hybrid contains less than $100 worth of lithium. Shortages when producing millions of large batteries for vehicles and stationary applications may increase the price. Cobalt, another component found in some Li-ion batteries, is expensive and if required in high volume, demand for this hard and lustrous gray metal could cause global shortages."...

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/availability_of_lithium

A couple of posters mentioned the "Brine Issue". At least one mentioned "mining" the lithium. Actually, lithium is only one product that can be "mined". I will refer you to a company website for a company that is already doing this in Mexico, and providing fresh drinking water to the local resort community.

http://www.gsetech.com/

This company put their first plant in Mexico, due to the hostile political environment in the United States, related to NIMBY thinking, EPA regulations, permitting restrictions, etc., etc. I don't understand why anyone in their right mind would want to do anything in the U.S.A. (even with something as green as gsetech) due to the stupid politics, and simply village idiot thinking that prevails here. Don't get me wrong, I love the U.S.A., but the time has come for someone to be brutally honest about the insanity that exists here.

BTW - the gsetech plant is a net producer of electricity, potable water, minerals, and good will.

Let's see... 750 tons of brine minus one ton of Lithium leaves 749 tons of brine.

Makes you wonder why the Arabian Sea is so salty from the plants there.

So here's what they say:

"In addition to clean, affordable drinking water, we can also provide the following options at our plants:

• Excess Renewable Power from the following sources:
• Low-Grade Geothermal Wells
• Solar Ponds
• Waste Heat Recovery
• Sea Salt
• Magnesium Sulfate Heptahydrate (Epsom Salt)
• Magnesium Chloride Hexhydrate
• Calcium Chlorid"

They are mining all the salts, and supplying fresh, drinkable water to the local community/resort. There is talk that the one part of their process that produces near semiconductor grade water (evaporate/condensate) will be available to a firm that is considering a new wafer fab in that area.