Turning sea water into fresh water has become a major industry around the world...Desalinization plants are everywhere helping to supply the ever growing need for water...but there's a fly in the ointment, it requires a great deal of energy to perform this task, and the energy supplied is mostly fossil fuels....Here then is a new approach using solar energy that hopes to become a carbon neutral solution to supply much needed water in some of the Earth's driest and poorest places....and perhaps someday the whole world....
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
Reverse Osmosis can be carried out on seawater for less than 4kWh/m3 desalinated water delivered these days.
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"Did you get my e-mail?" - "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place" - George Bernard Shaw, 1856
It's the answer to the rising sea level problem....
..."A one mm global average increase in sea-level requires 1/1000-th of a cubic meter of water for each square meter of ocean surface: 10-3 m3 × (3.618 × 1014) = 3.618 × 1011 m3 of water."...
..."The rate of sea level rise has also increased over time. Between 1900 and 1990 studies show that sea level rose between 1.2 millimeters and 1.7 millimeters per year on average. By 2000, that rate had increased to about 3.2 millimeters per year and the rate in 2016 is estimated at 3.4 millimeters per year .Apr 30, 2018"...
..." By the end of 2017 (considering plants built since 1965), the cumulative desalination capacity worldwide was 99.8 million m3/day, "...
= 36,427,000,000 cubic meters per year current vs 361,000,000,000 per mm available est is at 4 mm per year increase from ice melt....so we can go to around a trillion m3 of desalination yearly....or 2.74 billion m3 a day....
So we can increase our desalination efforts substantially...
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
..."More than 30 percent of North America is comprised of arid or semi-arid lands, with about 40 percent of the continental United States at risk for desertification [source: U.N.].Jul 14, 2008"...
One inch of rain over the entire US, an area of 3.5 million square miles, would equal around 233 billion cubic meters of water, condensed into 450,000 square miles, that would equal nearly 8 inches....to get to 30 inches a year, like say Michigan, you would need about 874 billion m3 , but over the course of a year that's just 2.4 billion m3 a day...Considering that you are already getting 5 - 10 inches a year in most locations, that cuts it by perhaps a third...now we're at 1.6 billion m3 a day...but starting with perhaps a thousand square miles, that would require just say 3.5 million m3 a day...but that would produce 640,000 acres of hemp....a multi-billion dollar crop yield...
Not sure whether that country has any form of national tourism promoting organisation...
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"Did you get my e-mail?" - "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place" - George Bernard Shaw, 1856
That would make it a great place to harvest sunshine and put it to good use.
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"Did you get my e-mail?" - "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place" - George Bernard Shaw, 1856
Um, er, desalination does not in itself affect sea water levels. All the water that is taken out plus all the water that is rejected recombines into one when the water that is taken out arrives back in the sea again.
Were the energy source to be an income source rather than from a fossil store, then the effects are relatively insignificant. Were it to be from a fossil store then one must factor in the volume of water that comes from combustion plus the effects of ice melt as a result of the CO2 that is emitted.
So there is something amiss with the basis of the above calculations. Don't shoot the messenger...
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"Did you get my e-mail?" - "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place" - George Bernard Shaw, 1856
The greening of a desert area adds to the global transpiration system, it holds water, while it is in circulation giving back and taking at all times, it will certainly hold a great deal of water and continue to over time, so yes it does reduce the amount of water in the sea....as we continue to add more land into the system, the amount of water that is in circulation will increase and so will the part that is in the soil and plants...This is about a solar system that uses the sun as the main power source for evaporation of the sea water, in case you missed the title of this thread...The ultra salty discharge has several different possibilities, one of which might be to replenish the salt flats, or the Salton sea, or as a source for useful minerals...maybe all of the above...
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
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"Did you get my e-mail?" - "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place" - George Bernard Shaw, 1856
..."Desert irrigation geoengineering needs huge amounts of fresh water. A first year rise in soil water content to daily restoring the moisture content in the 3.433 m deep BNU-ESM soil column to be 800 mm thick across the global deserts based on present-day soil water contents is equivalent to 7.6 mm of global mean sea level (2722 billion tons) (Supplementary Fig. S12f and Table 1). Ornstein et al.9 estimated an initial requirement of 4900 billion tons fresh water per year for Sahara desert irrigation (which they prescribe as requiring 500 mm yr−1 of precipitation), though in their simulation, this becomes self-sustaining due to increased rainfall over newly forested deserts. "...
You forget that dispersion in the oceans are not instantaneous. We made that same mistake with garbage dumping into the oceans. Higher salinity brine disposal will continue to be a problem.
I do like the briefly discussed proposal of utilizing the minerals concentrated in the brine for other processes. The "waste" products of one process should be considered a resource for another process, and so on and so on. As usual, the devil will be in the details.
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"Don't disturb my circles." translation of Archimedes last words
Well it's not really waste, it's just not cost effective at this time to separate all the individual components....what we need is a low cost system of purification of all these minerals....
These 4 make up the major minerals...I think the best solution is to just pump it to the Salton sea, which is conveniently located nearby...and needs replenishment...
I presume you realize that the Salton Sea formed from an overflow of a canal to irrigate the nearby Imperial Valley. Early in the twentieth century the Salton Trough was partially filled for 2 years with fresh water from the Colorado River before canal repairs were finished. Since then there were a decades where life thrived in this accidental lake. The salt buildup from runoff and evaporation has made this less hospitable to life. Adding more brine to this accidental body of water doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
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"Don't disturb my circles." translation of Archimedes last words
"Many of salt's 14,000 uses are found where you'd least expect salt. Salt sets the dye in fabric and is used to produce glass, polyester, plastics and leather as well as in the chemical industry. Salt assists in cleaning gas and oil wells and is an essential component in the manufacture of paper, tires, brass, bleach and case-hardened steel. Salt is part of the caustic soda and chloralkali processes. Industrial salts are often purchased in bulk and in various levels of purity depending on the application. See a range of FAQs about the use of ice melters and water conditioning salts."
"A) The Great Salt Lake is so salty that the only living things in the lake are algae, bacteria, brine shrimp and brine flies. B) Algae is a very small plant and that is the diet of the brine shrimp and brine fly."
Global brine shrimp supply a potential bottleneck to aquaculture expansion, part 1
"The brine shrimp artemia is a key feed for larval stages of various commercially farmed shrimp and fish species all over the world. However, the increasing global demand for brine shrimp cysts could be a bottleneck for the continued growth of the aquaculture industry, because its supply comes from harvesting wild populations, which can sometimes be unpredictable and vary considerably depending on environmental conditions.
As an example, the brine shrimp harvests and cyst supplies from the Great Salt Lake or GSL (Utah, USA) – which provides between one-third and one-half of global supplies – can be significantly affected by various natural phenomena like variations in the salinity and water level in the lake."...
So there is one thing the brine waste can be used for....farming brine shrimp for aquaculture....The Salton Sea could become a major supplier for this commodity that is dominated by the Great Salt Lake in Utah....
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
No. I don't have a complete better idea. Sea salt production for culinary and other purposes immediately comes to my mind but that is far from a complete proposal.
My real point here is that this is neither your nor my engineering responsibility. Neither of us should provide cavalier ideas for others to follow. The Salton Sea and desert reclamation are complicated problems that require committed long term efforts with recursive redesigns over time as unexpected complications occur.
The Salton Sea creation is precisely one of the unexpected consequences from desert greening. Solving one problem can easily make for other problems. Hopefully the other problems are less severe than the initial problem.
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"Don't disturb my circles." translation of Archimedes last words
The Salton Sea where there is lithium mining already underway for years now, may sit on the largest deposit of Lithium in the US...so I would imagine that the water there is much higher in content...
..."Most lithium today comes from Australia; China; and the “lithium triangle” that covers parts of Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia. California’s Imperial Valley, a desert region in the southeast corner of the state, could contain even larger reserves.
According to a recent study by SRI International, highlighted in Bloomberg Businessweek, the magma-heated brine underneath the Salton Sea could annually yield eight times the amount of lithium produced globally in 2019. With the lithium-ion battery market on track to reach $129 billion by 2027—up from $37 billion in 2019—the Salton Sea’s lithium could be in high demand."....
Um, er, 4kWh/m3 ......times 100,000m3/day...... times 365days/yr...<tap, tap, tap presses equals> um, er, 1.5 x108 kWh/yr.
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"Did you get my e-mail?" - "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place" - George Bernard Shaw, 1856
Tunnel boring cost The Tesla CEO says his Boring Company tunnel cost $10 million per mile to build. and travels at about .003 mph...that's 2.3 years to go 50 miles, and cost about $500 million....
Um, er, the intent in the original post is to use <...Solar...>, which only has capital costs to set up.
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"Did you get my e-mail?" - "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place" - George Bernard Shaw, 1856
Many engineering projects fail because maintenance budgets are zeroed out. Glass in the desert will get etched. Water will leak and mandate repairs to be performed. Still your point that this use of solar energy instead of fossil fuel to power the desalination process is correct.
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"Don't disturb my circles." translation of Archimedes last words
Actually it was the starting point of this whole thread. Just sayin'.
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"Did you get my e-mail?" - "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place" - George Bernard Shaw, 1856
Re: The Great Solar Dome Desalinizification Project
04/30/2021 5:47 AM
There mist be some pills or something available for that...
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"Did you get my e-mail?" - "The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place" - George Bernard Shaw, 1856
Using parabolic trough type solar concentrating collectors for steam production in a desalination process....
The parabolic mirrored collectors are aligned with the east-west journey of the Sun to receive maximum radiation, this heats a transfer fluid, typically a light oil, well above 100°C, this superheated fluid is then pumped to the boiler which then feeds steam to the condenser, producing clean water....The waste brine can then be pumped through a water jacket that encircles and preheats the incoming sea water feeding back along the incoming line to discharge and further refinement in some cases....
I am sure that most have heard of how to get water by using a plastic sheet to create a condenser. There is water even in the desert air that can be captured this way.
It is a passive system,requiring no energy input.
I realize this method is not commercially feasible unless the scale if very large.
A dome of several miles or more would be required,but once built would eventually pay for itself.With proper design the dome could create an internal partial vacuum that would lower the boiling point of the water and enhance condensation.
As a second thought,why not capture the water vapor from our sports stadiums?
Humans exhale a lot of moisture,especially when excited.
Even when not occupied,they could be useful to a lesser degree,due to the moisture in the ground.
Eventually,there will be water wars,where every drop counts.
Direct closed-loop recycling of waste water into potable water will become the norm.
Treated effluent is actually cleaner than the river or lake water that it is being put into or sourced from.
It is much simpler and more efficient to bring effluent up to potable standards than to bring raw water to same standards.
It is only the mental bias against it that keeps it from becoming commonly used.
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"A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child." "Never argue with a stupid person.They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" "To create an apple pie from scratch, first you must create a universe"
I've wondered for a long time about doing away with the re-condesation stage.
Just float thousands of really cheap rafts off the coast of Califonia. Each raft has a large flat black area just below the surface of the sea, and mirrors designed to reflect several "doses" of sunlight onto the black heater. The winds are predominantly West to North West, so, the clouds provide extra shade for the deserts and more rain over the Rockies which can be routed back to the deserts for irrigation.
Same thing off the West coast of Africa to re-green the Sahara.
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If you spend all your time looking for people and things to complain about: trust me, you will find plenty to complain about.
In a similar way, a (technical team) was tasked to develop a roofing system that would promote cooling in the day time, and heat retention in the evening, on flat rooves. What they came up with was a system consisting of a shallow thickness of (slightly-viscous ?) tar, in which there were millions of tiny, white-ish, globules. In the day time, the sunlight would warm the globules enough to cause them to rise to the surface of the tar, thereby making the predominate color of the roof essentially white, which would then tend to reflect more light, and thus, help cool the air inside. In the evening, when darkness prevailed, the globules would cool off and sink under the surface of the fluid tar, rendering the color almost completely black, helping to retain any enclosed heat and trapping any incident heat during the night time. Sort of an active, and self-regulating, system of heat-energy regulation. Maybe, it's time for that kind of approach to be re-considered ? ...
No, I don't rember the systems' name, but modern materials could certainly improve the performance of the application ...
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''illigitimi non carborundum...''(i.e.: don't let the fatherless (self-deluding,sabotaging, long-term-memory-impaired, knee-jerking, cheap-shotting, mono-syllabic, self-annointed, shadow-lurking, back-biting, off-topic-inquisitors) grind you down...)
People that live in hot arid regions have used a variety of passive cooling techniques for centuries. Many of the home brew passive cooling sites use the ancient principles. However, if one is use to modern AC, these techniques would probably disappoint. These techniques cool, but there is no humidity control. Evaporation does work well in arid climate, and they use it with indoor fountains and walls, if they have the water.
And that's the problem in Saudi Arabia. Water. They need water in a hot dry desert. Thus the salt water treatment dome. Using the heat of the desert to de-salt water. Lots of water. Crop water.
As for passive cooling, nano scientists have recently tapped into a novel way of emitting, radiating heat, thru a low impedance path, directly into space, off of this planet. It's a one way trip. It puzzles me why the environmentalist haven't jump on to this. Or anyone concerned with the heat on this planet. It can greatly reduce the cost of cooling any structure without energy, and it's suppose to be cheap. That reduces energy demand, plus lowers the temp of the planet. This nano material reduces the temp of the structure below air temp, sorta like leaves do. Some surfaces have even condensed water. What more could an environmentalist ask for?
Well, there is more. They have found a way increase the thermo-electric effect in man-made materials. This means the hot side and cold side of a structure can produce electricity. Our future structures might control temp and humidity, all on there own, and give us some electricity while doing it. Think about that.
But this doesn't solve the crop needed water. Not yet. Unless we can cool enough region, to bring humid ocean air in. But that will affect someone else's weather.
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Light is only half of what you think it is.
Two items that are absent in your posting. For every two gallons of salt water converted to fresh water, one gallon of concentrated brine is returned to the sea. This then affects the fish life, coral life, mangroves and wetlands and eventually, us, who are dependent on what is fished from the seas and oceans.
The other item never mentioned at all is that sea levels may actually not have risen as predicted. but land mass has dropped due to the tectonic flows. This happened while I was in Au and panic was rife about the sea level have risen on the Gold Coast. It was actually proved and confirmed the coast line had dropped 10mm, and that was hushed up quickly. The municipality then rebuilt the beaches affected for the tourist to enjoy.
For all the advantages there is a down side that will over time affect many people and aquatic life. Now we need GM crops to handle salt and that in turn affects bird life and top soil.
There is enough fresh water at the poles, we simply need to harvest that if need be, but nature knows what she is doing, just people are not very smart and waste far to much. Strange how before water became and commodity on the stock exchange, we seems to have enough for everyone, suddenly water became scarce and under threat the big business wanted more of the water. Why does big business not use desalinated water for process and leave the fresh water for people to use? But the concept is great and I am sure Dubai, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Doha will will benefit greatly, however the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf are already high in salt with few fish species and trying to swim in them, is hard work. What will they be like with more concentrated brine in them.
"Strange how before water became and commodity on the stock exchange, we seems to have enough for everyone, suddenly water became scarce and under threat the big business wanted more of the water."
Follow the California aguagymnastics if you want a preview of the coming water wars.
Amazing how a mega corp like Nestle can have such an outsized effect globally.
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Knowing is the end result of learning, not believing.
No worry, with all the robots they are pushing for, all will be fine. Robots don't drink water or wash, besides, using robots, people will not get dirty so we can save a few baths/showers a month.
The up and coming water war to take the cake will be the Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia. Sudan and Egypt will suffer very soon and I don't see Egypt's Nile delta farmers taking it all nicely.
If people stop buying bottles of water and drink tap water we will have a lot less plastic and plenty water. Shame on Coke Cola and all others for selling and exploiting bottled water and shame on these idiots who buy it at elevated prices. The plastic cap is worth more than the contents.
I'm proposing that the waste brine be used to preheat the incoming salt water and then be pumped to the Salton Sea that will be used for Lithium mining and brine shrimp farming to supply aquaculture advancement....I guess you didn't catch that...the links are all there...a study would have to be done first of course....
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
So what will they do in 3 years time when the saline content is now too high for the shrimps farming? Extracting lithium from sea water is an energy intensive process so just extract it at the desalination plants. The brine needs to be pumped to this Salton Sea and brine is not nice to steel pipes or valves. Not even nice to HDPE pipes. What will they do with all that salt they will end up having when the water evaporates over time. The world has plenty salt flats in Australia and Africa and the US. Do we need more?
You create another wasteland and the same problem all over again. How to fix what we thought we were being smart about.
effective recycling methods will greatly reduce this. The technologies are being developed. This is all new and mostly unresearched terrain. No one cared as long as we could just bury them or dump them in the ocean.
That's the problem with extractive resource economies. Not sustainable. Its that Damn circle of life again!
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GibiNy4d4gc
Disney Animation at its peak!
eat your heart out Pixar.
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Knowing is the end result of learning, not believing.
The Great Salt Lake supplies nearly half the brine shrimp now produced...
..."The salinity level of the Salton Sea is 44 parts per thousand (ppt), compared to 280 ppt for Utah's Great Salt Lake (at Gunnison Bay), about 210 ppt for Israel's Dead Sea, 87ppt for Mono Lake, and 35 ppt for the Pacific Ocean. The numbers of visitors to the Salton Sea area has fluctuated over the past few years."...
...so the high salt level seems to be an environment the shrimps enjoy and thrive in...
There is a geothermal project plant at the Salton Sea that is being proposed for the lithium mining operation...
..."The EnergySource 49.9-megawatt Hudson Ranch I geothermal plant went on-line in the Salton Sea geothermal field on March 9. It is the first in that field to come on-line in twenty years.
The Salton Sea known geothermal resource area (KGRA), EnergySource President and CEO Dave Watson said, has a total economically recoverable geothermal resource potential of between 1,400 and 2,000 megawatts. It has a developed capacity of just under 330 megawatts.
Among geothermal opportunities, Watson said, “the Salton Sea KGRA is unique. It is the most powerful resource in the U.S.,” with “a capacity factor approaching 95 percent. It has the best combination of high pressure, very high temperatures -- 600 degrees Fahrenheit and above -- and very good permeability, because you’re drilling into a sedimentary basin.”"...
..."A brine pipeline is a pipeline to transport brine. It is a common way to transport salt from salt mines, salt wells and sink works to the places of salt evaporation (salterns, salt pans). Brine pipelines are also used in the oil and gas industries, and to remove salts and contaminants from water supplies."...
..."California’s vast lithium deposits—as much as one third of the world’s current lithium demand according to some industry estimates—are also seen as a way to propel the state’s green economy. Deposits in the Imperial Valley alone could potentially produce up to $860 million annually in revenues, according to the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
The California Energy Commission (CEC) awarded $7.8 to two lithium recovery projects. Uniquely high concentrations of the dissolved soft metal are found in the brine produced by the state’s geothermal hotspots.
The Salton Sea Known Geothermal Area contains an estimated six million tons of recoverable lithium within presently available geothermal resources."...
..."The Salton Sea is about 15 by 35 miles (24 by 56 km), though it varies in dimensions and area with fluctuations in agricultural runoff and rainfall.
So the waste stream from desalination roughly doubles the salinity from somewhere around 35 ppt, that would yield a waste stream of around 70 ppt, one gallon potable and one gallon high salinity....and the Salton Sea has about 6 million acre ft of water at 44 ppt....so how many gallons of waste water would it take to raise the salinity to that of the Great Salt Lake(280 ppt) in Utah....The only water being added would be naturally occurring rain, so some water would be lost to evaporation every year....The average loss to evaporation every year is around 1.3 million acre ft...and about 3.3 inches of rain per year...and some small amount of runoff from surrounding farming area...let's assume waste stream at 100,000 cubic meters per day....anybody?
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
It seems others have done the homework, costed it out and realised the cost is still far to high. So pumping in more concentrated salt water is not the solution. Just a quick fix for now and a bucket load of problems later on.
Hey mouthy, do you own the site and think you are the only person we should all praise and fear. FW, its an open forum and clearly your head is so far up your arse only your opinion matters. Get a hobby FW
Wow. Now that is a great demonstration of dismissive arrogance. If you were clearer in which water from where would be going where you might have a point.
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"Don't disturb my circles." translation of Archimedes last words
100,000 cubic meters would be about 26.5 million gallons or 81 acre ft.... so 81 acre feet of water per day for a year = about 30k acre feet per year....
...brine shrimp have been found to live in anywhere from 35 ppt to 280 ppt salt water...
So the added salinity is not a problem for the foreseeable future...
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
..."A small, commercial brine shrimp industry based on pond culture has already been established using Salton Sea water near Salton City. Brine shrimp are slow-swimming, filter-feeding crustaceans which graze planktonic algae from the water column ."...
..."Artemia(brine shrimp) serve as baby food for fish in their developmental stage. The microscopic shrimp thriving in high-saline lakes in the China, Kazakhstan, Russia and the United States, have for decades been a staple feed for farmed fish and shrimp.
A kilogram of artemia can cost anywhere from $40 to $100."...
..."The Great Salt Lake is considered the largest source of brine shrimp. The cooperative produces roughly 1,400 metric tons of brine shrimp. That number accounts for half the global supply of artemia."...
..."Great Salt Lake contributes an estimated $1.3 billion annually to Utah's economy,[62] including $1.1 billion from industry (primarily mineral extraction), $136 million from recreation, and $57 million from the harvest of brine shrimp.[63]"....
It's a little more than twice the size of the Salton Sea at present....
343 square miles of the Salton sea = 219,520 acres
One inch of rain falling on 1 acre of ground is equal to about 27,154 gallons and weighs about 113 tons.
...so for one inch of rain over 219,520 acres, 219,520 x 27,154 = about 6 bil gallons...
....so for 3.3 inches roughly 20 billion gallons of rain per year added or...
...One acre-foot of water equals 325,851 gallons ...
...so 60,000 acre ft per year average fresh water from rain....and 30k acre ft of brine waste added...or 90k acre ft total water added per year...so many many desalination plants that size could be added...like 42....just to reach parity with evaporation...4.2 million cubic meters of water a day....
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
You can't fool me,mister.That is an eroded footprint left by Paul Bunyan!
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"A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child." "Never argue with a stupid person.They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" "To create an apple pie from scratch, first you must create a universe"
Well, you have it all worked out now. Go start your sea monkey farm and train them to mine lithium for you. That way you can save the world, supply California South with water and live in your condenser sphere. Just don't muck anymore of the world for others. FW.
It sounds to me like you are practicing the very things that you criticized earlier.
Are you the pot,or the kettle?
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"A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child." "Never argue with a stupid person.They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" "To create an apple pie from scratch, first you must create a universe"
There are plenty of places in the world where people travel many miles and endure many hardships to mine natural sea salt.
There is a large world demand for salt.
Why not set up a salt recovery operation near a desalinization site?
Two birds with one stone?
As far as lithium mining ,there are companies already mining the Salton sea for lithium,which comes from the run off of irrigation water.
(The miners are really cool and laid back).
In a million years or so,there may be creatures that do that naturally,or perhaps with advances in DNA design and modification,one may be custom made for this feature.
Perhaps the brine shrimp gut bacteria could be modified to extract lithium?
I am certain that someone is already working on this.
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"A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child." "Never argue with a stupid person.They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" "To create an apple pie from scratch, first you must create a universe"
The solar dome doesn't seem to make much sense as explained. Superheating liquid inside it will generate very high pressures which a dome is poorly equipped to withstand, and the dome is poorly shaped to receive heat input from surface-mounted mirrors.
The narrator seems doubtful of the possibility of exploiting the brine, but that is the most certain part of the scheme. The solids content of brines have been exploited for centuries and magnesium, to give one example, is one of the industrial products.
The solar dome is not an evaporator, it's a condenser...and it's not air tight, it has catch basins around the base and condenser pipes running from it that the steam and water enters and further cools(condenses) ....It would use parabolic trough type solar collectors for heating the transfer fluid that is used to boil the sea water....the brine would be used to replenish the Salton sea, and brine shrimp farming in this proposal....
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
So the solar domes are like giant stills, they're heated by solar energy. at the solid base of the dome water is heated, evaporated, then condenses on the dome and runs down the sides into catch basins and driven by steam pressure into pipes that feed the fresh water reservoir and into the fields for crop growth....the sea water is fed into the area via giant underground tunnel that is run with a slight decline(probably less than 1% slope) from the sea, making it gravity fed....the water then just has to be pumped from the tunnel outlet to the solar domes...This is mostly high desert and the Salton sea is well below sea level, so the waste brine will mostly be going downhill...
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
This is not the design pictured at the beginning of this thread, it is my concept of something that would actually work based on the original concept...
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
..." The maximum temperature of the working fluid in current commercial applications is 395°C. However, one of the current research and development (R + D) topics is the increase of this temperature up to 500°C or even 550°C to increase the overall plant efficiency."...
I got a question. Let's say that we have mile of that reflector, arranged to track the sun. And we use a pump to fill the reflector at sea level. And then put check values in the collector.....could the heat drive the water up a 4000 ft. mountain? Or, could a series of reflectors squeeze it over?
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Light is only half of what you think it is.
Well for one thing the higher you go the air temperature drops...at 4000 feet it's about 45° F....You could superheat the water and insulate the water line at a lower altitude, then the steam might climb the mountain and condense on the way down....or you could fashion a steam driven screw to pump the water uphill as it condenses...or probably many other ways...
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
I was thinking of filling the SS from the west coast. But, without paying for it. I think your idea is pretty good if we could get the sea water there. I think it would be hard to fund with boring and pumping cost. An above ground pipeline would be cheaper and easier for earthquake repair. If there was a low pumping cost, investors might see the value fresh water in the region and shrimp and mineral mining from the waste.
Personally, it's not worth the trouble. Court would take at a minimum of 10 years. None of our water or climate problems are going to be solved with our present system. The only real security is to learn to live without the grid. Solar, passive, geo...etc. Property is needed to do it.
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Light is only half of what you think it is.
No, I guess you really need to read the entire thread to see where this is leading....actually I guess you need to read a few threads...haha....this is a continuing saga of solving some of the World's perceived problems, global warming, rising sea levels, CO2 emissions, water shortages and desertification, sustainable building materials, all in a cost effective and profitable way...
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All living things seek to control their own destiny....this is the purpose of life
...."Thermal desalination is one of the most popular, most common and oldest RES applications globally. Technologies that use the heat generated by solar radiation include MSF, MED and vapour compression distillation (VCD). These are energy-intensive processes, especially in areas with higher water salinity, such as Middle East countries (can reach 45 g/L) [89]. On the other hand, however, these regions exhibit favorable conditions in terms of solar irradiation, which ranges from 2200 to 2400 kWh/m2 per year [90]. These factors, i.e. the scarcity of water and the availability of high-level solar radiation, make solar energy the most suitable RES solution for water production in desalination systems [18,57]."....
As everyone knows,sunlight is made of many different wavelengths of light.There are paints and dyes that absorb different wavelengths of light,but is there a coating,or a liquid;(ink,pigments) that absorbs all wave lengths of sunlight?
How efficient would a dome covered with this coating be at condensing water without and external energy,similar to putting a glass over a bowl of water in the sunlight,and watching water trickle down the inside?
Perhaps clear is actually the answer;Just using natural convection,no boilers.
At sufficiently large scale could this not be an answer?
Volume vs surface area increases dramatically with an increase in size of the dome.At a certain size,the volume of air within will weigh more than the material used to construct the dome.
The dome could actually float,according to Buckminster Fuller at a 5 mile diameter,minimum,using conventional building materials.
(Anyone want to calculate that,feel free..go for it.)Simple calculation,I just don't have time right now.
There is also a constant upward air flow above a dome,which could be used to cool the outside and aid in condensing the water vapor,power turbines and provide auxiliary power needs.
Also,the problem of waste water;why not create another Great Salt lake where the super-salty water is allowed to dry and be harvested for minerals and salt itself.There is a huge demand for salt in the northern climes in winter.
Plenty of desert to spread it on.
There is also a problem of sewage in large cities.
The water that is discharged from waste water plants in the USA is cleaner than the river into which it is discharged.
It would be simpler and cheaper to convert it back into potable water than to dump it back into the river.The problem is in the public perception of the process.
I know that a dark colored vehicle gets hotter inside on a sunny day than a lighter colored one.
Maybe I will use my car to distill my own water....hmmm...?
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"A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child." "Never argue with a stupid person.They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" "To create an apple pie from scratch, first you must create a universe"
I wonder how hot a car painted with this would get?
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"A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child." "Never argue with a stupid person.They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience" "To create an apple pie from scratch, first you must create a universe"
Think about what we could do if we could passively solar pump water. We could pump sea water inland for construction cost. And any arid area could be watered with passive desalination.
Wastewater sludge might be solar pumped into the deserts for soil generation.
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Light is only half of what you think it is.
New tech cheaply produces lithium and H2, while desalinating seawater....
..."The lithium is pulled through the LLTO membrane toward the cathode when a current is applied, and the process generates hydrogen gas at the cathode and chlorine gas at the anode, both of which can be collected. Where lithium starts out at a concentration of just 0.2 parts per million in unprocessed seawater, experiments found that running it through this cell in five 20-hour stages enriched the concentration to over 9,000 parts per million, leaving a solution that was pH-adjusted, centrifuged, rinsed and dried to leave a lithium phosphate powder of 99.94 percent purity, meeting standards for battery-grade lithium phosphate.
According to the research team, the electricity required to produce a kilogram of lithium in this way (about 76.3 kWh) would cost around US$5 – and every kilogram of lithium would generate a bonus 0.87 kg of hydrogen gas and 31.12 kg of chlorine gas. At 2020 prices, these side products alone could sell for between US$6.90 and $11.70.
Another side bonus is that the seawater that goes through just one stage of this process comes out with total salt concentrations under 500 parts per million. According to the researchers, this "implies that after lithium harvest, the remaining water can be treated as freshwater. Hence, the process also has a potential to integrate with seawater desalination to further enhance its economic viability."
How long will the gear last? Well, the researchers say they tested the LLTO membrane for more than 2,000 hours in Red Sea water and found "a negligible decay in performance," so things seem positive there. And will the equipment be expensive? It doesn't seem that way. "Although a rigorous economic analysis will be still necessary to include other capital and operating expenses," reads the paper, "it is arguable that the energy cost is the major expenditure in this process."
..."Seawater and brines have tens of thousands of parts per million (ppm) of salts, and typical drinking waters can have hundreds to well over 1,000 ppm, mostly less than 200 ppm concentration (ppm equals milligrams per liter of water)."..Jan 22, 2015
You certainly have out done your self aggrandizement this time SE. More than half of the replies to your posting are your own replies. Now that's the way to pat yourself on the back.
The Great Solar Dome Desalinization Project
Re: The Great Solar Dome Desalinization Project
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