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Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water (news.mit.edu)

submitted 11 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science@mander.xyz

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[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I live in Vancouver BC, our drinking water comes essentially from mountain run off and snow melt in two local watersheds. We get less and less every year.

My thought is that with distillation we could use brackish/ river water, then concentrate the brine until it's as salty as ocean water and put it in the ocean.

My thought about sewer outfalls was that adding the brine to the sewer flow should pretty much match the salinity of the source because any volume that goes into the pipes comes out of the sewers. (minus some evaporation).

[–] jadero@mander.xyz 1 points 11 months ago

As long as nobody is using drinking water for irrigation, the output does pretty closely match the input.

But my point was that we can treat that water for use and reuse. That way, the desalination is kept to a minimum.