Can Seawater Fix California’s Drought?

How do we make seawater drinkable? And can that technology save California?!

Hosted by: Michael Aranda
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[RafaelRabinovich]

Direct solar desalination was used in Chile some 120 years ago. Why can't such a simple method be massively introduced in California? Israel's southern city of Eilat uses it for most of its water.

[stGruhn]

or California could stop trying to grow rice in the damn desert.

[apinakapinastorba]

Oh that's why raisins come from california.

[justindie]

I can't believe it! Desalination is what I've been studying for my Science Fair project this year! I'm hoping my prototype will win me something at ISEF. I'm not using any of the methods mentioned in the video though.

I'm using forward osmosis, and I can't believe they didn't mention it! In my opinion, it has so much more potential, it uses very little energy and is much simpler and cheaper to build and maintain. In my design I'm attempting to use zero input energy. My lips are sealed on any other details though, I might patent it! Thanks for touching on this topic!

[hikaru-live]

There is the Beijiang Power Plant located in Tianjin. The power plant boiler itself uses desalinated sea water and is fired using coal. The hot steam from the exit of the turbine is used to heat the sea water in a multi-stage flash process and other industrial processes nearby, as well as providing room heating for the nearby communities. The desalinated water goes into the city water supply. The brine also goes to the same industrial processes nearby, which provides chlorine, soda and table salt from the brine. As of the hot ash from the coal, limestone is added turn the ash into cement. This way every single material that went into the power plant complex becomes some kind of useful product, except CO2: the coal's energy gets turned into electricity, industrial heat and room heating for winters, the coal itself turns into cement and CO2 (sadly that is not caught now.) Seawater is pumped in with the initial intention to be cooling water of the power plant, but it turned into a practical source of city water supply. As of the brine it is put into multiple uses after being concentrated at the power plant.

[tomkeyser]

I lived in Los Angeles most of my life. They let all the coastal rain water drain into the ocean. stupid. just to stupid.

California has relied to heavily on their quota of water from hoover dam in Nevada. whereas Arizona has created many reservoirs to reduce their dependence on their quota of water from hoover dam.

[agustinneurosian]

The Brien can be sold to companies that produce chlorine gas and make Sodium hydroxide. Since brine is electrolyzed to form NaOH and Cl2 products. Furthermore, if one has a mercury cathode one could also produce a mercury sodium amalgam to later produce sodium metal. All of which are very useful chemicals in the industry.

[Master_Therion]

Seawater is so salty... just like YouTube's comment section.

[Extraterrestrial-With-A-Finger]

By far one of my favorite and most interesting videos D-News has provided me with so far this year. Just between the information provided and the way it was delivered, I really enjoyed this! Thank you...

[Ynhockey]

02:13 Not true. In Israel desalination provides more than 50% of the drinking water, and this can increase to almost 100% even given current capacity. Israel's Mediterranean coast is 273 km long, meaning about 3.2 km per 100, 000 residents. California's coast is 1, 350 km long, meaning about 3.4 km per 100, 000 residents. This means that with the same coastal utilization, California can provide the same amount of water to its residents, the vast majority of whom live close to the coast. Australia's desalination plants also provide up to 50% of each region's water demands, and their capacity can expand significantly.

This will free up the natural water sources for agriculture, but of course the long-term goal is to use treated waste water for agriculture, since desalinated water is considered too expensive for this purpose. In any case, getting water inland is really not that much of a problem long-term, but you need to make significant infrastructure investment. Israel's natural water sources are mainly in the east of the country, while the sea is in the west, meaning that for its desalination program, the national water company (Mekorot) had to invest billions into new conduits and pumps to reverse the general water flow in its system. California will need to do the same, because both desalinated water and waste water will now come from the west.

[nicolaiveliki]

Solar desalination is usually a byproduct of solar power plants using collectors, where the steam is used to drive a turbine. So you produce fresh water AND electircity, to boot. Solar collection power plants are larger and more expensive than PV plants, but they can transform a larger portion of solar radiation than PV panels (ca 0.4 kW/m² compared to 0.2 kW/m²) into electricity

[emmamay]

OK, stupid question time... Don't power plants regularly use fuel to turn water into steam? Could power plants near the coast use seawater for that, and then condense the steam into something drinkable? Presumably with some changes to the turbines, etc., to not contaminate the condensation with lubricants etc.

Why not just use salt water for flushing toilets and fire mains. It's a system currently used by all our Navy ships. Add a green dye so people don't mix them up. Salt water deters rats in the sewers and it's better for fire fighting because it boils at a higher temperature. That would free up millions of gallons of treated, potable water.

Salt water could be used for many industrial uses as well. Of course the infrastructure of having a new set of pipes and drains run for the "green briney" would be a steep up-front cost. However, if we had sewers just for sewage, sewage treatment plants would have much less volume to process. And non-sewage drains could simply be directed to rivers with little to no treatment.

[earthbjornnahkaimurrao]

Desalination requires energy. Power plants require water for cooling. Combine = win.

[kds]

$25, 000 per month divided by 1, 200 homes works out to $20 per home per month. Not too heavy a lift.

[blackoak]

Related question, in a solar desalination plant why not create evaporation flats at the end to provide salt? This is effectively how we have gotten salt deposits in the past which we mine for the salt, so why can't we get the water for drinking and the salt for food from the same source?

[quidne]

To SciShow. $25, 000 a month for 1200 homes = about $20 a month, per home, for electricity. I would think that would be reasonable, especially with a water shortage.

[CassesVultus]

2:41 so a little over $20 a month per home. It may not be ideal but it is manageable.

[ChristineMAbrell]

Just the past 5 years? It's been longer there was a brief break. you mentioned the Carlsbad desalt plant again, that's the whole reason I watched this video. Cbad pride!

[lifehacker]

2:45 soo that's like... 21 bucks a month per household? How exactly is that a problem? Every household could pay that easily.