Water

[Larry Caldwell]

I ran across this article this morning. Why was it not headlines in every coastal newspaper in the US? Desalination may become the default fresh water source on coastlines.

Fluorine nanostructures can desalinate water 2,400 times faster than carbon nanotubes

Incredibly small fluorine rings are far more effective than conventional and even cutting-edge desalination methods, at least in the lab.

interestingengineering.com

 

[leonz]

If we ever get to the point where we start using small thorium salt reactors for power
we will be able to distill as much or more sea water as an aircraft carrier is able to.

The US Navy distilled 100,000 plus gallons a day for use by TEPCO at Fukushima
to cool the reactor piles when their reactors failed after the earthquake.

They pumped the distilled water from the aircraft carrier to barges and pumped it from the
barges to shore to cool down the atomic piles. If my memory is right they used helicopters and
hoisted water bags up over the reactors to dump water on them as they could not use sea water
to cool the damaged atomic piles.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

100,000 gallons is literally a drop in the bucket. Practical desalination needs to produce 100,000,000 gallons a day.

 

[ponytug]

Fun paper, is 't it?

Missing in the details is that those particular molecules are neither stable, nor usable in a membrane with any sort of stability. So, a light bulb idea, with lots of TBD engineering and chemistry to come.

However, the paper was a wake up call to reverse osmosis membrane designers that the way nature does it, with narrow, hydrophobic channels, restructures water and enables much higher water flow rates.

What the observation doesn't change is the energy required to separate pure water from brackish, salt, or mineral laden waters.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Larry Caldwell]

How do you make a fluorine molecule unstable? It's not like it's going to oxidize. The big advantage of the new tech is that it runs on a fraction of the energy required for RO.

 

[beowulf]

Wow, that is 'nano'. Interesting concept - and needed.

 

[deserteagle71]

I keep reading about sea levels rising to the point where coastal communities may be flooded. I also read about (and am experiencing) the severe drought in the western US. So...I hope this desalinization process is perfected soon. We could lower sea levels and get us living in the dry southwest some much-needed water!

 

[grsthegreat]

What do they do with the salt from the water? Pump it back into ocean until entire ocean becomes the great salt lake?

 

[deserteagle71]

What do they do with the salt from the water? Pump it back into ocean until entire ocean becomes the great salt lake?

Put it in a container and sell it to you as table salt? "Sea salt"?

 

[duffer]

What do they do with the salt from the water? Pump it back into ocean until entire ocean becomes the great salt lake?

Use it export it to countries that need it. It's just a commodity that is needed around the world.

Aruba has a large desalination plant and exports all of the salt they create.