EnMasse

[Harry Chorpita]

What happens to the leftover gunk from desalination plants anyway?

Can't just make Salt I'm sure it's not that simple and there must be a lot of the stuff.

Your thoughts?

[skeptikool]

I've bought sea salt and paid more for it. I imagine uses could be found for all the residue resulting from desalinization. That that was surplus, I should think, could be re-absorbed by the ocean without ill effect, because of its vastness. Not so, the Dead Sea.

[Harry Chorpita]

[HAHL]

[skeptikool]

Harry Chorpita:

[Harry Chorpita]

[HAHL]

[skeptikool]

Harry Chorpita:

[Harry Chorpita]

[skeptikool]

Harry Chorpita:

[Harry Chorpita]

[Diane Demorney]

Harry, stop it. That's 2 threads here that you're harassing skeptikool. Consider this a mild reproof.
/mod hat off.
_________________
Scissors cuts paper. Paper covers rock. Rock crushes lizard. Lizard poisons Spock. Spock smashes scissors. Scissors decapitates lizard. Lizard eats paper. Paper disproves Spock. Spock vaporizes rock. And as it always has, rock crushes scissors.

[Reverend Blair]

At the risk of wandering back toward the topic....

1. What, besides salt, is left over from the desalination process? I assume there's something.

2. Since dropping ocean salinity around melting glaciers has been noted as one of the many problems caused by global warming, could salt from desalination be used to help address that?

3. Is desalinated water going to be used for irrigation? My opinion of irrigation isn't really high.

All I really know about salt is the drinking habits of truck drivers who work in the salt mines of Saskatchewan, so some links and stuff would be handy.
_________________
He was a wise man who invented beer.
--Plato

[bshmr]

Let's see if this illustration helps (it may not):

Ambient coastline water = 90 parts water, 10 parts minerals of which 3 are salt (Note: the preceedcing is written in brown pixels generated by brown bits)

Desalination extracts 80 of the 90 units of water with 10 lost; the residual when dumped back into the sea doubles the relative mineral and salt content for 10 per 100 to 20 per hundred. There are lots of things or dosages where twice as much will kill you.

On the second pass: less than 90 parts per hundred of water but not quite the 80 parts in the waste are processed, over 10 parts per 100 are mineral but less than the 20 in the waste.

[ Complete dilution of waste minerals is never achieved. Ocean currents, tides, and the like can help but the locale is going to be altered. ]

BTW, OTTOMH, just a hypothetical.

[Rufus Polson]

[skeptikool]

Rufus,

I got very much out of your reply. I think a mountain is being attempted to be made out of a molehill.

I'm curious to know where, and if in fact, on our coasts there are such operations that exploit seawater content.

I think it most probable that we would be seeking the chemical content rather than potable water. And if that were the case, perhaps what, if anything, was returned to the oceans may be fresh-er water than what was removed.

[pogo]

I agree. I would think that it is all a question of scale. If you are returning concentrated residue to a small area of relatively stable water then obviously the salinity will rise. It all depends on how much you residue you are returning and where you are returning it to.

My septic tank is full of unhealthy stuff when it is concentrated, but when it is spread throughout our septic field it is relatively harmless.

[Makwa]

[bshmr]