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junktrunk909 t1_j21ohy9 wrote

Reply to comment by Techutante in UIUC Researchers propose a new way to get fresh water from seawater, without the disadvantages of traditional desalination. They say that a vertical “capture surface” that is 210 m wide and 100 m tall, could extract enough vapor floating above warm oceans to supply 500,000 people with freshwater by lughnasadh

I've read posts about this several times and they conclude that the salt that is generated by this process at scale is far more than there would be a market for and the salt that is generated is more of a sludge.

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Techutante t1_j21qce5 wrote

Yeah, some solutions I've read include filling in old pit mines (many of which were dug out of salt veins because it's easy to get through), brine based storage solutions as a heat battery or ultra-cooling facilities for data centers.

Each solution has it's own problems of course, like salt leeching into ground water tables and a lack of scale to handle the possible output of brine.

Atmospheric condensation is a bit of a troublesome issue in it's own way though right, because you're altering the climate distribution of moisture. Not that we aren't altering everything all the time, but imagine if a country were to divert the flow of water from a river that historically ended in another country.

Only then imagine you're doing it with the rivers in the sky instead. Obviously it would be quite a while before capture technologies scaled up to that point, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

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sharksfuckyeah t1_j21w7td wrote

A few days ago I read a headline about salt based batteries being more efficient than lithium batteries. Maybe there’s a way to create batteries while also generating both power and clean water at the same time: https://energycapitalpower.com/researchers-develop-sea-salt-battery-4-times-the-capacity-of-lithium/

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Techutante t1_j2215mo wrote

Yeah I think they brinier the better for those too.

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Greenhoused t1_j227488 wrote

They dump salt All over the roads wbere it freezes too

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