Samuel Coleridge summed up the problem in 1797 in 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' when the mariner states "water, water everywhere, and not any drop to drink". The problem we have is that while our world has huge amounts of water, most of it is not potable. Adding to the difficulty, what fresh water we have is all too often polluted or contaminated. Worse, in some places, fresh water is wasted on activities that have nothing to do with human or agricultural consumption.
Zion is right to note that this is a serious problem. Fixing this problem requires energy to desalinate it and to remove pollutants, either chemical or biological.
Worse still are the economics of water supply. The world's people in need of clean water are often those least capable of paying for the cost of desalination and pollution abatement. The requirement to fix all this required energy, lots of it.
Given the size and scale of the problem, this energy can only come from a few sources in the form of electricity: fossil fuels or nuclear power. Renewable sources such as wind/solar cannot meet this demand. And it makes little sense to use fossil fuels for desalination when nuclear power is available and can be used for this task.
As the desalinated water can be stored, I’d have thought desalination would be an ideal use for intermittent energy - run the plants when there is surplus/cheap electricity.
The problem with water storage is the size and scale of what needs to be stored to make a difference. For example, the city of Los Angeles has a population of 3.8 million. Each person uses125 gallons of water per day. That means the daily city water usage is on the order of 1.75 million tonnes of water. These numbers mean that you will need a gigantic tank farm simply to store a single day's water use.
And that's just for one city. There are many, many other cities in the world much larger with much larger water supply demands.
For all practical purposes in dealing with large populations, fresh water must be produced on demand. Storage is simply inadequate.
Historically this is shown by the fact that availability of water was for the last 5,000 years the limiting factor on the maximum size of cities. Only the ancient Romans learned how to evade this limitation by building aqueducts - large scale transport of water from one area to another. Given the size of the Tiber River, its water volume was tiny compared to the full water demand of a city of about one million.
Rome's population began to collapse the instant all the aqueducts were broken in the siege of 537 AD. The population of the city plummeted from over a million to under 100,000 in just a few years. It was an urban catastrophe the ancient world had never seen before.
Quite right. To our list we can add that it's difficult and expensive to transport. The cost of building Roman aqueducts and our modern municipal underground water systems is enormous.
And let's not forget that nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers have been desalinate sea water for years. Here's an excerpt from a study conducted by the MIT Center for Energy & Environment Policy Research regarding how the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant's (located in Southern California) energy could be used in addition to producing electricity. https://tinyurl.com/bdxwksux
"Diablo Canyon could serve as a powerful driver of low-cost desalination to serve fresh water to urban, industrial and agricultural users. The site could operate a desalination plant equal in size to the state's largest desalination plant in Carlsbad – or much larger – at about half the cost per gallon of freshwater produced."
Today AI and data centers are discovering nuclear energy as a viable solution to power their operations. Not just because of low CO2 emissions, but also because of nuclear energy's high capacity factor, and not being dependent on a just-in-time fuel source. Desalinating sea water, and treating waste water could be another area where nuclear energy thrives behind the meter. The need is certainly pressing.
Interesting topic. The very high cost of desalinated water makes me very appreciative of the almost free water from our well - just the tiny cost of running an electric pump. A mission we support in Africa provides assistance to the natives for drilling wells for clean drinking water. Desalination will eventually become front and center when our major aquifers in farms and ranches get so low (Data Centers use a tremendous amount of water for cooling) that the need for more water becomes dire.
We know where we are headed. We need more desalination plants now. Even though expensive, what is the cost of not building them? - mass migrations, farming droughts, food prices skyrocketing, water wars etc?
I envision a massive national project similar to the building of the US Interstate Highway (IHS). Yes, expensive, but let’s calculate the costs of waiting, and not doing this.
The bigger challenge than cost is having politicians willing to tell the American people the truth about this issue. Although that will get easier as water shortages get more frequent and disruptive.
The energy cost of desalination is not too bad -- 3 kWh/m3 (3 kWh per ton) according to the article referenced. That would be about 10¢/ton for electricity from new nuclear power plants (outside US or EU). Your photo of the Israel delsal plant shows two tall stacks, a clue that the plant burns some sort of fossil fuel.
I read somewhere that Israel’s desalinated water was causing problems as there were no trace elements dissolved, giving rise to weird illnesses. Magnesium deficiency??. But now we know that, we can add the stuff back in presumably.
Samuel Coleridge summed up the problem in 1797 in 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' when the mariner states "water, water everywhere, and not any drop to drink". The problem we have is that while our world has huge amounts of water, most of it is not potable. Adding to the difficulty, what fresh water we have is all too often polluted or contaminated. Worse, in some places, fresh water is wasted on activities that have nothing to do with human or agricultural consumption.
Zion is right to note that this is a serious problem. Fixing this problem requires energy to desalinate it and to remove pollutants, either chemical or biological.
Worse still are the economics of water supply. The world's people in need of clean water are often those least capable of paying for the cost of desalination and pollution abatement. The requirement to fix all this required energy, lots of it.
Given the size and scale of the problem, this energy can only come from a few sources in the form of electricity: fossil fuels or nuclear power. Renewable sources such as wind/solar cannot meet this demand. And it makes little sense to use fossil fuels for desalination when nuclear power is available and can be used for this task.
As the desalinated water can be stored, I’d have thought desalination would be an ideal use for intermittent energy - run the plants when there is surplus/cheap electricity.
Yeah - that's what the old fashioned windmills on ranch land did.
The problem with water storage is the size and scale of what needs to be stored to make a difference. For example, the city of Los Angeles has a population of 3.8 million. Each person uses125 gallons of water per day. That means the daily city water usage is on the order of 1.75 million tonnes of water. These numbers mean that you will need a gigantic tank farm simply to store a single day's water use.
And that's just for one city. There are many, many other cities in the world much larger with much larger water supply demands.
For all practical purposes in dealing with large populations, fresh water must be produced on demand. Storage is simply inadequate.
Historically this is shown by the fact that availability of water was for the last 5,000 years the limiting factor on the maximum size of cities. Only the ancient Romans learned how to evade this limitation by building aqueducts - large scale transport of water from one area to another. Given the size of the Tiber River, its water volume was tiny compared to the full water demand of a city of about one million.
Rome's population began to collapse the instant all the aqueducts were broken in the siege of 537 AD. The population of the city plummeted from over a million to under 100,000 in just a few years. It was an urban catastrophe the ancient world had never seen before.
Yes, unfortunately water can’t be compressed, it’s heavy and bulky and we need a lot of it.
Quite right. To our list we can add that it's difficult and expensive to transport. The cost of building Roman aqueducts and our modern municipal underground water systems is enormous.
And let's not forget that nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers have been desalinate sea water for years. Here's an excerpt from a study conducted by the MIT Center for Energy & Environment Policy Research regarding how the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant's (located in Southern California) energy could be used in addition to producing electricity. https://tinyurl.com/bdxwksux
"Diablo Canyon could serve as a powerful driver of low-cost desalination to serve fresh water to urban, industrial and agricultural users. The site could operate a desalination plant equal in size to the state's largest desalination plant in Carlsbad – or much larger – at about half the cost per gallon of freshwater produced."
Today AI and data centers are discovering nuclear energy as a viable solution to power their operations. Not just because of low CO2 emissions, but also because of nuclear energy's high capacity factor, and not being dependent on a just-in-time fuel source. Desalinating sea water, and treating waste water could be another area where nuclear energy thrives behind the meter. The need is certainly pressing.
Interesting topic. The very high cost of desalinated water makes me very appreciative of the almost free water from our well - just the tiny cost of running an electric pump. A mission we support in Africa provides assistance to the natives for drilling wells for clean drinking water. Desalination will eventually become front and center when our major aquifers in farms and ranches get so low (Data Centers use a tremendous amount of water for cooling) that the need for more water becomes dire.
We know where we are headed. We need more desalination plants now. Even though expensive, what is the cost of not building them? - mass migrations, farming droughts, food prices skyrocketing, water wars etc?
I envision a massive national project similar to the building of the US Interstate Highway (IHS). Yes, expensive, but let’s calculate the costs of waiting, and not doing this.
The bigger challenge than cost is having politicians willing to tell the American people the truth about this issue. Although that will get easier as water shortages get more frequent and disruptive.
We need energy and clean water for humans first. AI, crypto, and other needs come second, if at all.
Can we do both?
The energy cost of desalination is not too bad -- 3 kWh/m3 (3 kWh per ton) according to the article referenced. That would be about 10¢/ton for electricity from new nuclear power plants (outside US or EU). Your photo of the Israel delsal plant shows two tall stacks, a clue that the plant burns some sort of fossil fuel.
I read somewhere that Israel’s desalinated water was causing problems as there were no trace elements dissolved, giving rise to weird illnesses. Magnesium deficiency??. But now we know that, we can add the stuff back in presumably.
Just a crazy thought - is there any chance that the waste brine from desalinization could be used for liquid salt cooling in Fast nuclear reactors?