Comments on: How Hard Is it to Convert Seawater Into Fresh Drinking Water?

By: Joe,dont borrow at all

Joe,dont borrow at all — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:41:58 +0000

theirs a company in california that specializes in this.They make efficent equipment to do it,but they dont do the actual distilling itself.Energy recovery is the name listed under the stock exchange erii

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:41:05 +0000

Troubleshoot* sorry

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:39:06 +0000

@Matt: The story about the admiral who turned the Navy nuclear is fascinating – one of my favorite stories involves him drinking the make-up water for the reactor for the shock value in front of some politicians.

@Joel: Nobody calls it electrodialysis in industry – it’s electrodionization. And man, is it a pain in the ass to change out the modules. Of course, RO membranes and resin are both pretty terrible in their own respect, so…

@SteveO: Most new desal plants are thermal (where it is sustainable), most of the money for new plants is in thermal desal. The problem is, every plant requires an individual who is familiar with that plant to optimize and troublesheet – knowledge from one plant doesn’t necessarily carry over to another plant, the systems are so finicky. Pain. In. The. Ass.

@Buckaroo: Aruba supplies all of its potable water through a system my company built. We’re planning another one.

@Need More in Tampa: Unfortunately, if you’re speaking of the one I’m thinking of, we built that one, too. Sorry!

@Ed: Those are ions, and that’s electrodeionization.

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:01:08 +0000

I’m not a physicist but I read somewhere that particles in water can be give a magnetic charge. Don’t know if this is true but if it is, perhaps many of the particles in water could be economically removed with magnetic energy rather than evaporation or reverse osmosis?

By: Need More Water in Tampa

Need More Water in Tampa — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:48:54 +0000

in Florida we have a desal plant, but we don’t use it to capacity. Idiots built it in an environmentally sensitive area. Seems nobody involved realized the byproduct of all that desalination would be salt.

By: jim hanny

jim hanny — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 05:00:36 +0000

Researchers are Yale University’s School of Engineering & Applied Science have discovered a breakthrough that seems fascinating:

http://bit.ly/4eVmDZ

and…

http://bit.ly/48GVi5

and…

http://bit.ly/22OC2h

By: Patricia McMahon

Patricia McMahon — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:10:29 +0000

I live on Cayman Brac in the Cayman Islands. Sea water is treated by reverse osmosis the same way Dasani and Aquafina are treated. It costs about 4 cents a gallon (US) to have it delivered and tastes great.

By: Steven

Steven — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:46:11 +0000

@Jonny

Verizon FIOS did it. lol

By: Jonny

Jonny — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:22:16 +0000

@Hyacinth

The problem w/ that is then you have to BUILD a separate water line to homes for showers/laundry/toilets, and that’s gonna be expensive to tear up streets, lay pipe, tear up yards, and break a new water line into each home you intend to serve.

By: SteveO

SteveO — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:20:53 +0000

I think you may have come across some dated information. Thermal desal technologies are uncommon outside of the middle east. What is far more common is the use of membrane technology through the reverse osmosis process (See Spain, Australia, Florida, Texas, and California to name a few).

Plant size and cost comparisons to conventional supplies are hugely site-specific. In places like southern California, where conventional supplies must be transported very large distances the cost difference between desal and conventional supplies are not far off from one another.