Why Is Desalination So Difficult?

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An overview of seawater desalination: removing salt to make drinkable water from the ocean.
Correction: The Carlsbad plant produces 50 MGD, which is roughly 190,000 cubic meters per day (not 23,000 as stated).
It might surprise you to learn that there are more than 18,000 desalination plants operating across the globe. But, those plants provide less than a percent of global water needs even though they consume a quarter of all the energy used by the water industry. The oceans are a nearly unlimited resource of water with this seemingly trivial caveat, which is that the water is just a little bit salty. It’s totally understandable to wonder why that little bit of salt is such an enormous obstacle.
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Пікірлер: 5 200

@PracticalEngineeringChannel 10 ай бұрын

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@permacultureecuador2925 10 ай бұрын

bruh literally never quote the WHO or WEF ever again.

@paintedwings74 10 ай бұрын

I don't understand why a flash evaporator would reduce scale build up. Probably because I can't visualize it; do you know of an image or paper I could read to clear up this idea? Thanks for all you contribute, Grady. I love it.

@verafleck 10 ай бұрын

The brine is also a potential source for rare minerals, etc.

@michaelfrank2951 10 ай бұрын

why can't the desalination plants harvest the waste brine for salt? selling real sea salt would be a good way to make up some of the cost.

@thomasking1490 10 ай бұрын

Oh yeah, private water companies have such a fantastic track record. That will definitely save costs in the long run. Yep. Please, do come and visit the UK; boat in our pristine waterways and relax on our totally not sewage covered beaches. All this in return for the £54bn in debt which they have totally assumed responsibility for and definitely won't have to be picked up by the taxpayer. /s

@dundonrl 10 ай бұрын

I've drank literally thousands of gallons of desalinated water over 20 years while I was in the US Navy. First ship used 7 stage evaporators and the last two used reverse osmosis. You couldn't tell the difference between them since it was pure water that came out of them and the engineers added minerals back into them to make them drinkable.

@johnmicheal3547 10 ай бұрын

How does the engine add the minerals back?

@nikkothegoblin 10 ай бұрын

Ship scale is a lot easier than city scale, glad it works

@memadmax69 10 ай бұрын

@@johnmicheal3547 Its not an engine. Its a desalinization plant. The chemicals are put in the water using a metering device before the water goes into the storage tank on the ship. We only had bromine injection on our ship. Bromine is used to kill any bacteria in the water.

@robertlewis5439 10 ай бұрын

Same here. The water got interesting on one of the big decks I was deployed on when it tried to distill saltwater fouled by fuel dumped by a Harrier. The "drinking" water tasted and stank of JP5 for weeks.

@memadmax69 10 ай бұрын

On our ship(USS Camden) we were fine with just a 5 stage evap. One was in the forward MMR and one back aft. The one back aft always made more water as my evap had a vacumn leak somewhere in the aux exhaust preheater that I could never find(but made a great shower during shutdown when the vacuum was broken lol) Sounds like you were on a carrier lol.

@morganmedrano920 10 ай бұрын

I'm a Navy veteran and I served on a Nuclear Aircraft Carrier. We had a desalination system built into the Reactor system using the excess heat from the steam powerd turbines. It was actually very efficient.

@andybaldman 10 ай бұрын

Nobody cares, bud.

@adrieltc 10 ай бұрын

nice, i was wondering exactly this. as nuclear and other powerplants have to boil water anyways, why aren't those systems combined?!

@morganmedrano920 10 ай бұрын

@adrieltc sadly nuclear doesn't have large profit margins. So big energy used the fear of radiation and meltdowns to justify closing plants... then went back to fossil fuels.

@bradley3549 10 ай бұрын

@@andybaldman I care.

@TacticusPrime 10 ай бұрын

@@adrieltc They are combined at times, but the designs have to be tested thoroughly.

@jawa6306 9 ай бұрын

As a water treatment specialist it feels good to be seen. The RO segment was dead on. TDS and scaling are constant challenges.

@WalterOMSD 7 ай бұрын

Same here, this is some great stuff, eapecially when family and friends ask me why don't we just constantly clean sea water 😂

@thomgizziz 5 ай бұрын

@@WalterOMSD Because it is energy prohibitive... and that is the only actual reason. Most of the "issues" here are because they are trying to make it economically viable not because it is super difficult.

@livetechsupport909 5 ай бұрын

Don't worry, we see you. No need to ever get salty ; )

@33moneyball 4 ай бұрын

@@thomgizzizexactly…it’s not difficult at all…it’s just not economically viable

@Spartan-sz7km 4 ай бұрын

Thanks. My country relies on people like you for about 1/4th of is water supply

@BlitzAttacker 7 ай бұрын

I grow salicornia (sea asperagas) at home and it does surprisingly well turning salt water into usable water and a snack thats pretty dang salty and not bad tasting in my opinion. Not sure if its great for every purpose but here in florida it works pretty well.

@mayhewfisher62 5 ай бұрын

interesting!!!

@kitemanmusic 3 ай бұрын

Can you use sea water for cooking vegetables?

@carlosgaspar8447 3 ай бұрын

freezing water as in sea ice will also desalinate the water.

@tomlxyz Ай бұрын

@@kitemanmusic besides the salt there's also pollution, especially if you get it at a beach near a city. And it tends to be too salty for taste

@Idrinklight44 13 күн бұрын

Very interesting, how much do you harvest?

@WKfpv 10 ай бұрын

Here in Uruguay we are facing a drought right now, and the government decided to mix treated salt water in the normal fresh water supply, so now we are getting water on our taps with a salt concentration about 10x of what it used to be. This video turned out to be very well timed for us.

@alexalekos 10 ай бұрын

so the water wasn't treated that well?

@danx9194 10 ай бұрын

Si pa?

@s_t_r_a_y_e_d 10 ай бұрын

@@alexalekos no, they're literally running out of fresh water so they're using treated salt water to pad out their remaining supply to meet demand until sufficient rainfall. read.

@alexalekos 10 ай бұрын

@@s_t_r_a_y_e_d but 10x the concentration is more than the intended for desalinated water

@ChucksSEADnDEAD 10 ай бұрын

@@alexalekos The water is well treated but they're purposefully blended with high salt water to increase the supply. Bad treatment would mean accidental dumping of salt water, no removal of toxic chemicals or bacteria, etc.

@n16161 10 ай бұрын

It is SO extremely important how you put things in perspective in these videos. “It took X kilowatt-hours to do this process.” You could end there and compare numbers at the end, but then people wouldn’t understand what that actually means. It’s great.

@Rncko 9 ай бұрын

And then it ends on --> 800$ PER DAY electric bill for utmost emotional damage.

@ivoryas1696 9 ай бұрын

@@Rncko Honestly, it was better than I was expecting... Although _all_ the caviats were (more or less expected) bummers.

@livedandletdie 9 ай бұрын

And then he dissed Nuclear... Which makes his points all moot. If you diss Nuclear, you don't deserve to have electricity in the first place. And that's probably why he lives in the eternally worsening state of California. Which only has 1 Nuclear Power Plant left, and constant power outages because oh look at that, these brainlets think Wind and Solar are good sources of energy... Let me tell you this, You'd require to cover the Entirety of the USA in Solar Panels to cover the global energy usage per day on Earth. You'd only need 2000 Nuclear Power Plants. And when they succeed with Fusion Plants, that number would drop down to 20.

@armegeddon22 9 ай бұрын

The sun does this for free by the millions of gallons a day. No “x watts needed” It’s not the process, it’s the method. The process is natural.

@DeeSnow97 9 ай бұрын

@@Rncko yeah, it's weird that that point was made against evaporators, while the ~$7/mo of industrial membrane plants wasn't expressed. that is only the primary desal step though, but even if we were to posit that all the rest of the costs increase the price by 5-10x (which would be completely ludicrous) it's still just $35-70 per month. not great, but not exactly catastrophic.

@jaggiayyangar5607 4 ай бұрын

Love this channel. As a trained EE I wish my education had this kind of practical experiments and thought-experiments.

@gamerin 7 ай бұрын

Really great explanations and comparisons. Thank you for taking the effort to set up the bench top examples. I believe that desalination won't come into popular view until it is the only choice left for larger regions of the world outside of the middle east. As mentioned, water is plentiful but the amount of energy it takes to transport it and prepare it is key.

@kitemanmusic 3 ай бұрын

To quote the Ancient Mariner: 'Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.'

@denelson83 3 ай бұрын

Why not use solar and wind power as part of the energy solution?

@TheDd2402 9 ай бұрын

Lived in Saudi Arabia for a while and dad worked at the desalination plant there. Interesting bit was steam generated by the boilers were split into two pressure points. High pressure steam was used to turn the turbines to produce electricity while low pressure steam was used to make fresh water. Interesting when I heard about it the first time.

@jakeannett6720 9 ай бұрын

That’s what I was wondering why should it “cost” energy to generate steam. Isn’t basically all of our energy added to the grid by steam spinning a turbine? Surely theres some way to spin a turbine and then drink that same condensed water vapor right?

@EZ-STEM 9 ай бұрын

And water cost more than their fossil products!

@EZ-STEM 9 ай бұрын

@@jakeannett6720That's distillation, purify the water of germs and removing salt content but it is the costly method of desalination.

@visionsofpromise 9 ай бұрын

I wonder if they ever thought to use this concept but with a nuclear power plant

@DanielGonzalez-gr5xp 9 ай бұрын

@@jakeannett6720 This is a great thought, but sadly there are some big drawbacks. The water used in most power plants is highly purified and the same water is used over and over again (closed loop) Using sea water would lead to more corrosion and mineral buildup in the pipes and mechanisms of the powerplant. It might also wear down the blades of the turbine.

@ImpendingJoker 10 ай бұрын

Here in Tampa they tried to build a RO desal plant near the Apollo Beach Power Plant. The biggest issue was not any of what you outlined here. The problem was zebra mussels. They are a non native invasive species that would collect on the intake pipes for the desal plant and they were spending 100's of thousands of dollars each month just to keep the pipes clean, and that is what killed the project in the long run.

@cowabunga2597 10 ай бұрын

Imagine living in Florida out of all places

@sneediumminer 10 ай бұрын

Not sure why one of the wettest states in the US needed a desal plant anyway. There's no way they would make any money when their competitors would just be collecting and treating the readily available freshwater for basically free by comparison.

@mrunderscorecool 10 ай бұрын

@@cowabunga2597considering the amount of people who move down here, I don't think your opinion is the popular one

@hedgehog3180 10 ай бұрын

@@thisutuber You could but that doesn't mean you'd have made any money from it, lime isn't exactly in short supply.

@hedgehog3180 10 ай бұрын

This is exactly the kind of unforeseen challenges that he was talking about. For new technology you often have no idea what issues might show up along the way.

@patronwizard4936 2 ай бұрын

Thanks for covering the renewable energy part, I've been grumbling about using that for years. Now I have a clue of the continuing drawbacks.

@edewindt 6 ай бұрын

Really good explanation of it all! I’m an operator at a large ultrafiltration membrane plant not far from the Carlsbad plant. Membrane technology is definitely our future and we are going to see more sea water RO plants popping up as our population grows in the U.S.

@vyor8837 3 ай бұрын

Or we just use nuclear power, completely removing power draw concerns.

@MrMarinus18 3 ай бұрын

The problem though isn't technical, it's political. Most people who live in cities are working class so capitalists are not going to build a desalination plant. Just like with electricity in the 19th century the government will have to step up and make massive investments in hundreds of giant desalination plants and set up huge agencies to operate them. The problem is that most western governments have become incredibly timid about huge projects like this and just like railways desalination is a very all-or-nothing thing. You have to commit to it or it will be a total failure.

@vyor8837 3 ай бұрын

@@MrMarinus18 wat? None of what you posted here makes *any* sense. Most cities literally can't *have* a desalination plant because *they aren't near the ocean*.

@SerienchiIIer Ай бұрын

@@vyor8837 Nuclear power is one of the most expensive power sources. It would make much more sense to use solar power, especially since drought conditions usually come with a lot of sunshine.

@vyor8837 Ай бұрын

@@SerienchiIIer It's only expensive because of regulations that exist specifically to make it expensive.

@crawford323 10 ай бұрын

On our 470' research vessel housed 130 people, we had two distillers plus a reverse osmosis. The distillery was pretty brilliant as we pulled a vacuum on the container and we used heat from our diesel electric engines. When the vacuum was applied the water would vaporize at 165°F rather than 212° F pretty clever. The units on our ship produced 1200 gallons per day. Some of that water was additional purified by R.O. So the waste heat from the engines was not an additional cost only the energy used by the pumps was energy negligible.

@lastdinousar 9 ай бұрын

That's super interesting! Do you think the energy required to place the vacuum in the container cost a notable amount of energy or was it negligible?

@jippo91 9 ай бұрын

It was really clever to drop the pressure below atmospheric in the container. Thus reducing the boiling point of the water🤔 did you just use the already existing vacuum to vent the gas out of the container. Or did you have to use a constant vacuum pump for that?

@pr0xZen 9 ай бұрын

I can only assume pumps would be needed. But if the baseline vacuum pressure; the bulk work is established using venturi pumps/valves, then you can certainly leech that from a multitude of engine and auxillliary systems. Basically anything with a suitable fluid flow range can be exploited using venturi effect to generate vacuum without a notable energy or efficiency loss to those systems - because venturi is sort of a "skin drag" effect; it doesn't require any direct interference with or impedence of the fluid flow itself. You certainly _can_ bottleneck a flow to accellerate it and boost the vacuum pull of the venturi effect, but with large flow systems already in place and available then mass can go a long way in making up for speed. On a ship, engine inlet air, engine exhaust and coolant flows are probably the most interesting ones. Especially exhaust as its alrady waste energy, fairly high flow, and most venturi applications wouldn't really have much impact on the ability to use the same exhaust gases for _thermal_ energy. Then vaccum pumps might only be needed for moderste boosting, or as an inline support system to ensure adequate "vacuum pressure" stability.

@dj_menyo839 9 ай бұрын

@@jippo91I remember working on a similar one at a company I used to work for. It has to be a constant vacuum. The issue is that with the little heat needed (compared to standard boiling point). The water's evaporation aka expansion reduced the vacuum in the chamber. So we had a pump to maintain a constant vacuum. Here's the cool thing. The pump was a mechanical vacuum pump that was also ran by the motors fan belt.

@TwinSteel 10 ай бұрын

I think one reason people may have a hard time wrapping their head around how difficult it is to get the salt out of the water is that they can’t see what it does - it’s not just swirling around in there, it’s dissolved - it’s harder than getting the cream back out of your coffee

@LiborTinka 10 ай бұрын

Next time observing a mountain creek, let's admire the exquisite amounts of energy provided by the Sun to distill all that water.

@TatsuZZmage 10 ай бұрын

Now If only Texas would fix their broken infrastructure that is losing billions of gallons.

@AlexanderNash 10 ай бұрын

@@LiborTinka *low entropy energy

@iwanttwoscoops 10 ай бұрын

@@AlexanderNashYour comment only serves to show off. Shame

@Mike1614b 10 ай бұрын

@@LiborTinka yes the suns energy runs the planet. we are still highly dependent on fossil fuels - which are depositories of the suns energy from millions of years ago. by the way, the energy to charge batteries comes from fossil fuels so don't drink the Kool-aid

@vibratingstring 9 ай бұрын

You are a gifted presenter. I engineer stuff all day but get almost giddy sometimes when you release a new story.

@Stroheim333 8 ай бұрын

Nuclear powerplants are basically just "big waterboilers." Many of them are of obvious reasons situated near oceans. In them you get a lot of desalinated water steam in them, which easily can be collected and used as drinking water, and many nuclear power plants has that dual function: generate electricity and desalinate water. THIS is the easiest and cheapest way.

@paulcrusse7800 10 ай бұрын

I live in Malta. Most of our water is desalination water. Pure water without added minerals will eat and absorb almost anything. I worked at well known soft drink bottles and our water filtration room looked like a water fountain. It was made of solid stainless steel. Amazing what water can do .

@ElValuador 10 ай бұрын

Desalination plants combined with gen 4 nuclear power plants equals cheap carbon free electricity and as much water as the world needs. Unfortunately governments would rather control us with blackmail and fear.

@LiborTinka 10 ай бұрын

Yes - deionized water will alter taste in your mouth just by sucking in all the minerals. Naturally there should be a little sodium, calcium, magnesium, chloride, sulfate etc. in the water for it to taste fine.

@20chocsaday 10 ай бұрын

Also called Universal Solvent. Great stuff.

@ffwast 10 ай бұрын

@@20chocsaday Also hydroxic acid.

@OtterTreySSArmy 9 ай бұрын

That's exactly why the pipes in nuclear powerplants have to be high-quality stainless steel. The reactors have to have 100% pure water. Otherwise, you end up with a ludicrous amount of buildup in the cooling pipes, which is.....less than optimal.

@craigbabuchanan 10 ай бұрын

Spoken like a true engineer... "The instructions didn't say to not run salt water through the pump"

@happymann1000 10 ай бұрын

Yes. This is another engineer's problem. He is actually helping that engineer discover failure conditions to add to the warning labels.

@pobvic 10 ай бұрын

They will do after this video

@seneca983 10 ай бұрын

That's good. If the pump gets broken in the process he can return it since he didn't use in a way it's not supposed to be used.

@howardsimpson489 10 ай бұрын

@@seneca983: True but the pump guts are ceramic, stainless steel and silicone rubber so clean salt water should not hurt it. 600 psi is under half it's water blaster pressure so should not be strained either.

@seneca983 10 ай бұрын

@@howardsimpson489 If it's stainless steel it would probably corrode somewhat faster than otherwise. Stainless steel isn't really completely stainless. Though maybe it's not a big issue.

@arewhyinoh8595 7 ай бұрын

Salt flats were once massive brine pools. RO and pumping the brine onto large desert lake beds adds to the evap cycle. Salt deposits can be broken up and stored away. Also thinking about MITs recent answer to desalination which uses ion concentration polarization omitting the need for pumps or filters and can run off a $50 solar panel, it's less than 22 lbs, simple to operate and about the size of a small suitcase.

@NonEuclideanTacoCannon 9 ай бұрын

Before I had to move and downsize, I kept a few large marine aquariums. It's funny how the process of making seawater out of tap water, and making tap water out of seawater both have RO filtering as a middle step. Though for making seawater additional deionizing resin media is also necessary.

@Simple_But_Expensive 10 ай бұрын

I worked in a power plamt that used a multistage RO to clean up produced water from an oilfield. The oil was separated, and the water was run through softeners, but it was still in the part per thousand range. We ran the RO at 75% permeate and 25% reject in the winter. We had to run it at only 70% permeate in the summer due to the water being much hotter. Input temperature and pressure have a high effect on the process. We got

@sealpiercing8476 10 ай бұрын

What did you use the DI water for?

@Simple_But_Expensive 10 ай бұрын

@@sealpiercing8476 DI water was used for injection into a GE frame 6 gas turbine for NOx control. Some of the RO water was used in the engine inlet evap coolers to increase air density and improve power output (more air, more fuel). One plant that my company operated started with well water. The sequence was sand filter, carbon filter, softener, another carbon filter, RO, deionization. At each stage some of the water got sent to the next stage and some got used in a process such as the majority of the soft water being used as makup water for the boiler. All effluent streams (incuding rainwater) ended up in a flock tank and then a press. No water was allowed to leave the plant except as vapor from the inlet coolers and the cooling tower. Even black water was run through a mini sewage digester plant. The water that came off the press went back into the cooling tower. The solid “cake” that came off the press was chemically and mechanically identical to limestone, but was still classified as hazardous waste and had to be disposed of accordingly. We bagged it, and shipped it to a facility that stored it. The facility was, appropriately enough, an abandoned limestone quarry. That was the only zero discharge plant I have ever seen. Even then, the government wanted to dispute that classification since the bagged limestone left the plant. There was a tax break involved for being a zero discharge demonstration plant. Our lawyers pointed out that under their criteria it was impossible to have a zero discharge plant because some evaporation is required in any power plant. In the end, both sides decided to nullify any contracts and abandon the project. As far as I know, the plant is still rusting away, and nobody is attempting that kind of usage efficiency today because when they look at doing it that plant is held up as an example of a failure, even though it really succeeded. All because a government bureaucrat wanted to avoid giving a tax break.

@sneediumminer 10 ай бұрын

@@sealpiercing8476 what do you NOT use DI water for? it causes far less corrosion and leaves next to no scale/fouling

@toseltreps1101 10 ай бұрын

@@Simple_But_Expensivewow, that's a really good story. are you still in the business?

@rogerolander458 10 ай бұрын

The theoretical limit of water purity is 18.2 Mohm. In the semiconductor industry we meet a water purity requirement of 18 Mohm continually.

@Zomggorillaz 10 ай бұрын

Can I say I find something profound in this channel. There is so much mystery to our day to day but we are too busy to notice. When you read between the lines, this channel not only streamlines education, but also helps us understand why our modern society is built the way it is and makes us analyze and criticize. Keep it up!

@-danR 10 ай бұрын

it ALso MAKES deSALinAtion exCITing...BUT I'm NOT exACTly SURE how he DOES it!...

@veramae4098 9 ай бұрын

Just saw a vid about cheating in research in order to be published. Hmmm ... I tried to find it but can't. Lots of other sources on same thing though. Google: Harvard gina cheat

@theobserver9131 9 ай бұрын

"too busy to notice". Wow. that is such a sad state of affairs. "Too busy noticing" Would be better, and it IS a choice. ...and hey, you're here! You are noticing.

@kaltwarraith5172 9 ай бұрын

I recall reading about a mechanical technique for desalination a while back. (I think it was an israeli paper?) The idea was to lift a column of water in a sealed tube as high as possible until the weight of the column overcomes the air pressure and the water stops rising, forming a vacuum on top. the vacuum fills with vapor which is then forced out through a one way valve as the column compresses and the falling column which is still mostly liquid water can be used as a counterweight to raise another column. With multiple columns you can create a desalination engine. I'm not sure how this method compare to the membrane approach, but it would be interesting to see.

@user-in2nj6hd3u Ай бұрын

love your accuracy and engineering approach of explaining things: make complex things simple!

@JohnFox-X333XXX 10 ай бұрын

Well thank you Grady! My late father was a widely-acclaimed reverse osmosis water chemist but I never understood exactly what was special about RO, and the difference it could make. He travelled extensively in the UK and the Middle East, solving RO problems encountered by water utilities at local and even national levels, eg Namibia in Southern Africa. This video has resolved for me what had been a fog of comprehension, so I can’t thank you enough for facilitating a new enlightenment for me! 🙌 High five to you Grady!

@bobbyjoe232 10 ай бұрын

@@realityveil6151neeeeahha neeeah neeeeeahaahahhahaaahha neeehh? neeeahahah neeeeh? Neeeh!!!

@JohnFox-X333XXX 10 ай бұрын

@@realityveil6151 Of course I did but I never completely understood. A combination of youthfulness and the way it would have been explained by a technical expert.

@JohnFox-X333XXX 10 ай бұрын

@@realityveil6151 This dialogue is at an end.

@Rock48100 10 ай бұрын

@@realityveil6151 You are an incredibly sad individual

@corvidconsumer 10 ай бұрын

@@realityveil6151what did you gain from annoying random strangers

@87vortex87 10 ай бұрын

Brine water is used a lot in Europe for closed vertical ground source heating or heat pumps. Brine water is a useful resource to transport heat energy without the risk of the medium freezing.

@AtomBomb420 9 ай бұрын

I never knew that could even be done! Thanks for sharing!

@peoplethesedaysberetarded 8 ай бұрын

Interesting! Makes sense.

@dr.chimpanz.1324 8 ай бұрын

That's cool. The game I play a lot call oxygen not included has brine and salt water that is mainly used for coolant because it doesn't freeze. I didn't realize that that's a real thing. Just thought It was game balance.

@fauxfirefur 8 ай бұрын

@@dr.chimpanz.1324 ONI does have a good bit of sci-fantasy elements (the funny reverse entropy device for example), but almost all of the physics in that game are based on reality, if a bit exaggerated and simplified.

@BPFACTS88 8 ай бұрын

@@fauxfirefurLllLlLall(

@stevenhaff3332 9 ай бұрын

Thank you for this explanation of the difficulties of desalination. I found this helpful.

@pccles1 8 ай бұрын

the NPS by Crater Lake has some reverse-osmosis machines inside of various buildings at the ranger station. Filling a five-gal took around thirty minutes, the set-up was largely the same as your testing demo.

@craigpridemore7566 10 ай бұрын

Yes, I'm that guy. "How hard could it be?" Thank you for explaining how hard it can be and the energy costs involved.

@jasonreed7522 10 ай бұрын

A big chunk of the energy costs are from chemistry/physics constants like the heat of vaporization of water. If you want water to change from a liquid to a gas that will be 2.2kJ per gram. This is part of why reverse osmosis is more efficient, it doesn't involve boiling the water but will instead have other costs. (Like the energy input to pressurize the water, pressure can be considered a form of potential energy.)

@eaglescout1984 10 ай бұрын

What's interesting is this is the exact opposite of making maple syrup. Both distillation and reverse osmosis are options available to producers. But, in the distillation process, they keep what's leftover in the pan after most of the water has boiled off. And in reverse osmosis, they keep the discharge and reject the fresh water.

@world_still_spins 10 ай бұрын

Possibly sell the waste water from the sirup process as sweet water, naturally flavored.

@bobcostas9716 10 ай бұрын

@@world_still_spins You can sell the unboiled sap for more. It's eminently drinkable right out of the tree, and the trace minerals are believed to have health benefits. Also, if it's still sweet after RO then you're doing it wrong.

@oceanceaser44 10 ай бұрын

So your saying we can solve the water crisis with mass scale maple syrup production

@bobcostas9716 10 ай бұрын

@@oceanceaser44 May not be impossible. There's new tech now that coppices maples, then applies a vacuum pump to the saplings/shoots to extract the sap. Still very new, but apparently very efficient for sap production. If you can get the tree to grow, then it can produce a lot of sap from sub-optimal water sources. The caveat is that it's only in certain climates, and only in the spring.

@jestestuman 10 ай бұрын

@@bobcostas9716 yeah, but this syrup is imported wildly to Europe and it is disgusting, very poor quality compared to 'classic' syrups. I am not sure if this is caused by the tech or that they just settle on lower grade syrup.

@tylerdurdin8069 5 ай бұрын

I have a small wall mounted ultra pure water distiller that uses a flash evaporator in the sense it throws spirts of water on a hot plate. It makes 5 gallons per day and draws less than 10 amps 120v. Pretty neat but super expensive.

@LauLex 9 ай бұрын

This is really high quality, highly informative and professionally narrated content. Hats off to you kind sir, for summarization such a complex subject while still keeping an objective stance on the matter. Really, really well done.

@horaciokanashiro-hv2zn 5 ай бұрын

⭐

@HuyLy94 10 ай бұрын

During the "Millenium Drought" in Australia the NSW government funded an RO desalination plant to supply 15% of Sydney's drinking water with provisions built so it can be easily scaled to supply up to 30%. It's energy needs were offset with a massive new windfarm just out of Canberra. The plant was finished in 2010 right as the drought broke, so it was mothballed and wasn't used until the 2019 drought

@cericat 10 ай бұрын

There's a heap running in the other states except for Tas. And of course Toukley planned but deferred back in 2007 in our case. We really do need to reconsider them in NSW since Sydney's water demands can cause difficulties for other catchments, and also to support some of our ag needs rather than impact the regional water supplies.

@kevinrudd1 9 ай бұрын

Perth gets about 50% of their drinking water from our desal plants

@cericat 9 ай бұрын

@@kevinrudd1 not just Perth, you send a lot of water inland via pipeline.

@MusikCassette 9 ай бұрын

So das the desalination basicly work energy storage for the windfarm?

@scythal 10 ай бұрын

I've always been interested in learning how desalination works, I'm glad you've finally done a video on it!

@thetallgrass 7 ай бұрын

I've been wondering for years now if we could develop a piece of large machinery that operates off of tidal currents, consumes salt water that is constantly surrounding it, and desalinates it right there to be put in storage containers to be retrieved, or pumped back to land

@tuchavito0303 3 ай бұрын

I just discovered this channel and I have to say that I'm loving it, everything is really interesting

@batchampa 10 ай бұрын

After major draughts around 2007 in South East Queensland a desalination plant was added, but it was only part of the solution. All of the major dams across the region were connected via pipelines to help balance water supplies. Water can be pumped between areas of the region and the desal plant is used only when water is needed and can also be used as a buffer load on the power network too from what I understand

@bwhog 10 ай бұрын

One of the most interesting things you can see is where a fresh water river flows into the sea. From overhead, you can literally see the boundary between these two different sources of water as they mix. It is worth noting that the conditions in sea water intake vary day by day and even during the day. So conditions in a desalination plant have to be monitored closely in order to ensure efficient operation and a good product at the outlet.

@AdrianLee 10 ай бұрын

I think such a boundary is called a halocline, iirc

@jurjenbos228 10 ай бұрын

In some places, they have plants that win energy from this mixing, sometimes called "blue energy". This clearly shows it takes energy to get the salt out.

@truongtran-sl6rh 9 ай бұрын

@DerekFletcher1 7 ай бұрын

I work in water treatment in my county as an operator. We adopted membrane filters in the mid 2000's and there are very few treatment plants (at least in Canada) with this newer technology. Our membranes are made by PALL. It's such a new technology that the lifespan of the membranes is still unknown (outside of salt water). We have ordered a complete new set of membranes that will be replacing the old ones next year but this is only cautionary and not reactive. Our tmp's (trans membrane pressures) have held up with only minor, routine maintenance. Our effluent remains well within the 0.1 micron spec and our turbidity exceeds our provincial standard by multitudes.

@rickkwitkoski1976 6 ай бұрын

Today, global sailors (boats of 30 to 60 ft or so) mostly have a desalinater on them. These sailboats have good solar power and storage on board so they can power the desalinator. The sailors also learn to conserve both electric power and water. Find numerous YT vids about installing and using such systems.

@Zeppflyer 10 ай бұрын

An idea I've long wondered about in areas where seaside land is fairly cheap, such as the Middle East: seawater canals with an arched greenhouse over the top with collection gutters on the sides. Water from the canal evaporates, condenses on the greenhouse, and runs into the collection troughs. I'm sure this would be more complicated in practice, but it seems like a good way to use solar energy in a passive manner.

@BigKatz 10 ай бұрын

that's the best idea in the comment section (I'm a scientist in this field)

@yeahitskimmel 10 ай бұрын

Dang that's pretty smart and simple

@techheck3358 10 ай бұрын

water like that would start growing organisms

@filonin2 10 ай бұрын

@@techheck3358 So? They can be filtered out easily. The hard part is removing the salt, which this does.

@Mira-bt3zx 10 ай бұрын

Armchair science time. This could run into issues with creating flow. There are no rivers flowing through Dubai (other than a creek with the sea on both ends), according to a cursory check of Google Maps. So you’d need to induce flow to prevent salt and organism buildup. Flow could also reduce the efficiency because the new water would need to heat up. Also, the space vs. output might be an issue for certain areas, although if you live in a desert there’s probably a lot of available space. I’d bet you could get more out of a solution like this with a bunch of (pretty cheap) mirrors too. Cool idea

@OPiguy35 10 ай бұрын

Grateful for all that you do with this channel. As a non-engineer, this is an incredibly helpful way to grow my knowledge.

@nozrep 10 ай бұрын

yes!

@XenophonSoulis 8 ай бұрын

There are quite a few desalination plants in the Cyclades in Greece. For example, the little fresh water that the island of Syros (about 20000 people I think) goes towards things like the hospital or the production of a local traditional product that needs good water. The desalinated water isn't usually drunk though.

@bobby240582 6 ай бұрын

I really love the information you put out here. The only point I disagree is the privatisation of water treatment. Companys and investors deciding prices for drinking water after contracts have run out. There have to be other ways for water desalination or use of water rights.

@TheDroppedAnchor 5 ай бұрын

Exactly. Privately-owned public utilities is a much greater evil that he realizes. But he is extremely didactic when it comes to explaining engineering & chemical situations so I shall continue to subscribe. And that (misguided) statement was a very small part of an otherwise tremendous video.

@hairymcnipples 2 ай бұрын

It's pretty frustrating. How does the private company compensate for the risk? Why, by charging more than it would ever cost! Governments are big enough to compensate for that themselves, *without* also needing to compensate boards and shareholders.

@blocks4857 Ай бұрын

@hairymcnipples no they can't. Governments cannot effectively allocate resourcesb

@tomlxyz Ай бұрын

@@hairymcnipples the problem isn't risk but lack of competition. It's usually hard to have multiple infrastructure providers in a location in a reasonable way

@kmturley1 9 ай бұрын

Would be interesting to cover desalination in nature. For example, plants, animals and fish which can filter out salt from water...

@kmanccr 9 ай бұрын

do they? i thought it was primarily rain that provides desalinated water

@thatoneguy2136 8 ай бұрын

@@kmanccrseagulls can drink salt water cuz they have these salt glands that lets them cry out excess salt. I personally think that’s freaking dope. If we had that we wouldn’t have a water crisis

@codycast 8 ай бұрын

@@kmanccrso you think ocean fish drink fresh rain water?

@kmanccr 8 ай бұрын

@@codycast No but the salt isnt removed from the ocean... ie they aren't desalinating the ocean are they? they put the salt back into the water. I guess what op is getting at is how their kidneys regulate salt and remove it from their blood and to replicate that process at scale.

@RarebitFiends 8 ай бұрын

@@codycastDo fish drink at all? Can it be called drinking when your entire life takes place fully submerged? Edit: looked it up and answered my own question. Saltwater fish do drink because the salty water draws water from their less salty bodies. Freshwater fish do not drink however, their bodies are saltier than the surrounding water so they hydrate by osmosis.

@SailingFrolic 9 ай бұрын

I live on a sailboat and am in the process of building a water maker system that processes saltwater and filters it to fill the drinking water tanks in my boat. This is very useful information.

@soulslip 2 ай бұрын

What are you planning on doing with the brine that is produced?

@kamakaziozzie3038 9 күн бұрын

Hopefully store it for inland disposal.

@deweesegilyard2998 8 ай бұрын

Hello. Thank you for the great lesson on desalination. It was better than what I learned in my thermodynamics class.

@ericferguson1062 7 ай бұрын

I have to ask.. What filter / housing did you use for the demo? Also, How did the pressure washer hold up to the saltwater and continuous duty cycle?

@jacobmcmahon1915 10 ай бұрын

I'm currently drafting for a big waste water treatment plant in Texas and there is so much more to these facilities than I would have ever thought. I really appreciate that cities invest into these types of things.

@skyhappy 10 ай бұрын

The real world is so complex.... I'm in programming and the software code I saw in my first job was way more complex than anything I've seen in school.

@majackson14 10 ай бұрын

I was in the Royal Navy as an engineer and worked extensively on desalination and distillation equipment. After leaving I travelled as a civilian desalination engineer....brings back memories..

@nassalspray77 4 ай бұрын

I love that the shot of the sail boat cruising in the ocean was my home town - the Gold Coast Australia!

@ericlefevre7741 9 ай бұрын

There is a third desalination method that is used. Electrical desalination. The technology takes advantage of dissolved salts charged nature by running an electric current through the water and across ion seperation membranes. The negatively charged chloride ions are attracted to the cathode, and the positively charged sodium ions are attracked to the annode. The set up is only slightly more expensive than a thermal set up to install and it is an amazing demonstration of physics and Maxwell's Equations in action.

@chyneuze 10 ай бұрын

I live on a small island of 22km², desalination is the only way to get city water. Although the vast majority of homes have cisterns for rainwater recovery, the island has a fairly modern plant equipped with both desalination systems, reverse osmosis and desalination by vacuum/low pressure evaporation, for the latter the heat used is that of the waste incineration plant. But personally I rarely use city water as I have two cisterns under my house for a total of about 70m³ with charcoal-UVC filtration system. But it’s always good to have this backup.

@TucsonDude 9 ай бұрын

Which island? That sounds so cool!

@chyneuze 9 ай бұрын

@@TucsonDude St Barthélemy, Caribbean 😉👍

@BarnokRetro 9 ай бұрын

I ran evaporators in the Navy and drank the water for many years, it was pure enough to run through the boilers without building up excess scale as well. Tasted great, and made a mean cup of coffee.

@whosjulez1157 3 ай бұрын

So?

@Ajme-kb4os 3 ай бұрын

@@whosjulez1157they were commenting on their experience with desalinated water. It pertains to the subject.

@oliverseoliverse 4 ай бұрын

"Well, the instructions didn't say not to." Best advice ever lol. Love your vids. Very interesting.

@lancearmada 5 ай бұрын

This is pretty well done and answers some questions I have been wondering about.

@galaxyproductions2076 10 ай бұрын

I was just wondering about desalination yesterday! It’s super cool to learn about the engineered world even if this isn’t something I’m studying. Thanks for informing the masses Grady!

@repairengineer 10 ай бұрын

What is the theoretical minimum amount of energy that forms the lower bound

@Scum42 10 ай бұрын

It's amazing how much harder it is to desalinate water than it seems like it should be

@1495978707 10 ай бұрын

Well it’s easy to dissolve salt in water, and removing it is the reverse of that

@incognitotorpedo42 10 ай бұрын

I'm a chemist. It seems like it should be really hard, and it is. You're fighting both entropy and enthalpy.

@SoloRenegade 10 ай бұрын

it's actually really easy. Collect rainwater. Done. but of course he didn't bother to cover that method.

@nahometesfay1112 10 ай бұрын

@@SoloRenegadeHe explicitly noted this option in the video

@SoloRenegade 10 ай бұрын

@@nahometesfay1112 why didn't you give a time stamp? where was the discussion on how to implement it, on how it works, etc.? At 14:30 he INDIRECTLY mentions rainwater, but not rainwater collection. He's referencing ground water, lakes, and rivers. "if mother nature isn't dropping enough water for your particular area" this is wrong, and demonstrates his lack of understanding of rainwater collection and how it's done in such an environment.

@scotty2307 7 ай бұрын

I was stationed on a modern Aircraft Carrier. Heat is not in short supply when you have a couple of reactors, nor is electricity. We distilled all of our potable water, and then it must have been re hardened to some degree, because it was easy to rinse soap off in the shower. It also tasted really good if I remember correctly. It has been about 30 years.

@scotty2307 7 ай бұрын

Also, we made much more potable water than was required for air crew, and ships company, about 6000 people in total.

@GraemeSPa 5 ай бұрын

I worked on steam powered oil tankers built in the early 70's. We had two flash evaporators that ran from bleed steam at sea. These took seawater, heated it, sprayed it into a vacuum chamber, then reheated it, and sprayed into a higher vacuum chamber before the brine was then pumped back overboard. Each stage created water vapour that was condensed by the seawater feed, thus heating the water. The chloride content was around 1ppm and each evaporator could make 120 tons of water per day. The water was used for engine room and boiler use while separate tanks stored water for domestic purposes. To make the water suitable for consumption, it was passed through a mineral tank and then two stages of UV sterilisation. The biggest problem we had was when the deck department were cleaning tanks and would "decant" the slops over the side without telling the engine room to change over suctions to the opposite side. Any oil caught in the water would be picked up by the auxiliary seawater pumps and get into the evaporators that would boil off the lighter fractions as kerosene which would then get into the water tanks and add to the Engineer's workload. Good old days of being at sea.

@joelsmith5624 10 ай бұрын

I really love how clear and understandable your videos are! Good work

@Professor-Scientist 10 ай бұрын

Additional research is needed to conclude this.

@joanberkwitz2662 10 ай бұрын

I live half a mile from the Carlsbad plant. Thank you, Grady, for covering it! It’s been an excellent resource and source of pride.

@camtranquoc3745 9 ай бұрын

@nickardecky7404 9 ай бұрын

If you found out how the private company pay fines for dumping chemicals and paying off employees you wouldn't be as proud. Its a real dirty job and cutting corners in a hands on job like this puts people in danger who work there. Great source of water though...

@youtubezombies 9 ай бұрын

Who is Carl and why is he bad?

@TheRealFallingFist 9 ай бұрын

@@youtubezombiesNono, you've got it wrong. It's possessive, they just removed the apostrophe for logistical reasons. It's actually Carl's bad desalination plant.

@jerryakamuadams6399 6 күн бұрын

love that you did an experiment demo and didnt just talk about it. the scientist in me loved it.

@lennardbos4218 7 ай бұрын

I'm working for a company in the Netherlands that builds and uses machines for ground water (a well) and de-irons it for farmers or who ever needs it, also building ro and ion changers for all sort of uses from farmers to sauna's. Verry interesting stuff, got a cliënt who gets salt (brak) water from his well and uses 3000 liters for 1000 clean water using a RO. It's quite efficiënt for how bad the water is before but it's a real big energy user because the RO works at 10 bars so the pumps really work hard

@TCK-9 9 ай бұрын

I lived in a small Florida gulf coast city for years and this is how they got their water. It was very good. The only time I noticed a difference is if we filled the bath tub - the water had a greener appearance than what I was used to seeing in other cities. But again there were no taste or other useage issues for us.

@Adam-nw1vy 9 ай бұрын

My god. That's such a turn off!

@ohio_dino 9 ай бұрын

Idk how you drank the Florida tap water. 🫣

@jgkitarel 9 ай бұрын

@@ohio_dino Simple, it's cheaper than bottled water and isn't unsafe to drink. And in the past, it was the only game in town, as commercial bottled water on a wide scale is actually fairly recent. As in, I remember when bottled water was becoming common, and I am not old. More often, you would have water distribution stations where you put in say a quarter for a gallon of actually fresh water, which would be poured into the jug/bottle you brought with you, of paid extra for one to be provided for you to be reused. This was, and still is, common in places in the US where the tap water is of dubious quality and safety for consumption despite purification work. There are regions in this country where I will not drink tap water because of that. Most are in the Midwest, where local corruption actually made the water dubious to drink at the best of times, courting poisoning from industrial runoff or typhoid at the worst due to the ones supplying the water not investing properly in water purification, or keeping the systems well maintained due to taking the cheap route and pocketing the difference when they aren't outright embezzling the funds. A good bit of advice is to ask the locals if they drink the local water, and to generally not do so outside of major metropolitan areas anyway. What's good for general use like washing, bathing or showering, is not necessarily something you may want to drink. And yes, I am talking from experience here. Far less of a problem today, but it's still there. All it took was getting typhoid once to learn that lesson.

@jgkitarel 9 ай бұрын

Desalinated water, depending on the desalination method and the plant, can have a vastly different flavor profile, when it actually has one, than what most of us are used to, though. And the slight green coloring may have been a dye so you would know the water was safe to drink.

@charlessale409 9 ай бұрын

@@jgkitarelman… it’s insane that a highly developed country such as the US still hasn’t got some sort of national initiative in place to provide equitable access to drinking water.

@blueraspberrylemonade32 9 ай бұрын

Thank you, the camera shots, narration and editing are perfection. The small scale examples you built are a fun little break from other channels summed up wiki info dumps 👌✨

@justinw1765 9 ай бұрын

I remember reading about some Rice University research where they added nano copper particles (which are very black/dark colored) to water and exposed it to sunlight, and the water rapidly heated. But in salty solution, maybe the copper particles might bond with the chloride? Well, if not, you could combine the above, with also decreasing pressure on the system to lower the boiling/evap temp of the water. Then, the containers you use, could be borosilicate glass that have double wall, vacuum insulation. The combo of all 3, would very effectively use Solar energy to convert the water into its gaseous state. Granted, making such large glass containers with double wall, would be difficult in and of itself. But they wouldn't need to be too large though. Because between the lower pressure, the direct heating copper particles, the high degree of insulation, you would very rapidly convert the water into water vapor. The main issue would be dealing with the salt and keeping the nano copper particles separate. There is an alternative to the above, which is probably less efficient, but if you're using solar, won't matter too much and there is no particles to recover. Inner metal tank that is painted with ultra, ultra black, and then with borosilicate glass outer and again, a vacuum pulled on the space between the two containers (and again, also in the containers themselves to lower boiling temp). On particularly cloudy days, at night, of course you would have to use some other heating like electric. But, using the Solar would drastically reduce costs overall.

@BirnieMac1 5 ай бұрын

One option I didn’t see you mention for the management of desalination brine are evaporation ponds I’ve seen mention of them in a few papers, but wouldn’t they require very large basins to manage the amount of brine produced with RO? Which isn’t exactly a universally viable approach I’d be interested to see your take on it, I’d imagine there’s likely other issues I’m not aware of too as to why it’s not used more often

@davethompson6122 10 ай бұрын

A really interesting video showing how complex the workings of desalination plants are,I learned a lot about how little I know about this process,but great to watch and come away with a bit more knowledge.

@stanieldev 13 күн бұрын

We talked a lot about the idea of mixture separation in my statistical physics class. It was very interesting because Entropy makes the separation much harder because of the energy required to lower the entropy (separate water and salt).

@victorvanderdrift5006 3 күн бұрын

Thank you for always including metric units!

@curtisroberts9137 10 ай бұрын

In addition to the thousands of of plants on land around the world, there are thousands more because almost every naval ship and probably most commercial ships also use desalination to provide most of their water needs. The 30 year old ships that I served on had some nasty water, but it was drinkable (barely so) and the salt levels were low enough not to mess up your bodies balance. That was in the 90s. We also got tons of bottle water training in the middle east which was all desalinated. Those plants actually made water you could stand to drink. P.S. I love the eyeballs on the reverse osmosis machine. :)

@jimmym3352 10 ай бұрын

I was on the Enterprise, which at the time I was onboard was over 30 years old. But our water was better than the tap water here in Las Vegas. Hard water is the worst. Of course I drank a lot of soda in those years which helps with the taste, but I drank tons of water from the drinking fountains because you have to working in the engineering plants, I don't remember it tasting bad. And of course the soda we got in the middle east was also desal. water.

@curtisroberts9137 10 ай бұрын

@jimmym3352 I generally don't do tapwater unless it's fileted anymore. Even in small town USA you never know what's in the water until after its to late. Just like Camp Lejeune and Flint MI. A small town near me had some carcinogens above acceptable levels for over a year. No one knew until the water department sent out a letter saying it had been cleaned up. I assume you are a sailor. Semper Fi brother.

@cericat 10 ай бұрын

@@curtisroberts9137 water quality where I live in Australia is sometimes rough as well, I was supplying rain water to a couple of friends' families in the late 90s and early aughts because they were constantly getting sick otherwise, it's gotten better but still had times when a whiff of the water has been "I'm just not going to shower for a few days"...

@curtisroberts9137 10 ай бұрын

@@cericat I had an aunt that lived in the mountains of Colorado. Their well was all mineral water. Smelled of sulfur most days. Lots of 5 gallon jugs of drinking water delivered there.

@stuyboi888 10 ай бұрын

Yesssss finally, I am obsessed with this topic..... We need a way for clean drinking water in the future that is cheap and easy

@aungthuhein007 5 ай бұрын

I would love to see you be stumped looking at a paper like that and how you managed to figure it out. A video about that would be cool!

@holdintheaces7468 8 ай бұрын

I've always seen the salt buildup in desalinization as a business opportunity to sell sea salt in addition to providing water. Add in a power generation tower with mirrors and use the boiled water to turn turbines and you can generate at least some of your power needs back too.

@solaroid4442 7 ай бұрын

Sea salt is made cheaply by filling huge pools with seawater and letting the sun do it's magic. You cannot compete with free.

@holdintheaces7468 7 ай бұрын

@@solaroid4442 NaCl is used in quite a few industrial processes. You’re not trying to make a profit, you’re trying to recuperate operating costs with a “waste product” of the process. You completely missed what I was saying. Also, it’s not “free” considering there is pumping costs, collecting costs, and maintenance of all the equipment. Cheap, sure, but not “free”. And like i said, you’re finding a use for a waste product to offset costs, not competing with Whole Foods “organic sustainability sourced vegan keto sea salt from Fiji”.

@holdintheaces7468 7 ай бұрын

As a matter of fact, not all sea salt is even from simple evaporation. That only works in hot dry climates. UK produced sea salt like Maldon is heated with flames to evaporate. And the FDA only requires that the salt was “at one point from the sea”, so some mining operations count.

@88porpoise 4 ай бұрын

I would also add that if we moved to large scare desalination, the excess salt would extremely quickly exceed the demand for it.

@Nyonenoo 10 ай бұрын

If you can't source locally produced natural seawater, homemade is fine too

@BS-vx8dg 10 ай бұрын

How much energy does it take to separate humor from engineering?

@Volvith 10 ай бұрын

@@BS-vx8dg Less than it takes to artificially inject humor into engineering. ;)

@deonmurphy6383 10 ай бұрын

Interesting video, I did some work (electrical distribution/transmission) related to the USBR’s Yuma Desalination plant. It’s purpose was to reduce the salinity of agricultural drainage water before it was put into the Colorado river to aid in meeting the requirements of the Colorado River Compact treaty obligations with Mexico.

@vincitveritas3872 6 ай бұрын

My favourite engineering channel. Very informative 👍

@OneVerySadPanda 8 ай бұрын

We can also focus on building those billboards that capture moisture from the air and turn it into potable water as well.

@2001Pieps 10 ай бұрын

Also there is the issue of biofouling where bacteria grow on the membranes and clog them after a while. It turns out to be very difficult problem to fully address.

@Simple_But_Expensive 10 ай бұрын

Slow sand filters, followed by UV lamps, then activated carbon filters.

@thejman5552 10 ай бұрын

@@Simple_But_Expensive $$$$

@bradley3549 10 ай бұрын

@@thejman5552 His user name checks out.

@erylkenner8045 10 ай бұрын

@@bradley3549 Lollll

@oceanceaser44 10 ай бұрын

Just add salt to kill the bacteria

@embolobolo4237 10 ай бұрын

This is a video I didn't expect, I had to instantly watch it. I've been working with membrane desalination for a while and it looks super simple but under the hood, reverse osmosis still looks like alchemy. Thanks for the video!

@acole5975 9 ай бұрын

It might be good to have private companies build these plants but it drives prices up and relies on a third party. While I agree private versions would be good I think essential utilities like water should always be government powned.

@blakespower 8 ай бұрын

off the coast of California it is always foggy because the water is always cold. I think you can easily collect this water in the fog with condensers in the ocean and with some pumps to pump it to land with undersea pipes. much cheaper than using energy to evaporate or use costly reverse osmosis filters

@Jujukungfu 10 ай бұрын

Hey Grady, I really appreciate the content you bring to KZfaq. I'm going back to college to be a mechanical engineer and you've inspired me so much.

@sph4551 9 ай бұрын

Grady is a civil engineer

@Gandhi_Physique 8 ай бұрын

Hearing these big numbers about consumption and power usage.. it really makes you wonder how people were able to come up with this stuff and manage it for so many people. Crazy scale.

@davida1hiwaaynet 10 ай бұрын

Thanks for the informative video. I have worked offshore for years and we always use vacuum distillation or RO to produce water for the living quarters. It's funny when you tell new people that the delicious soft drinks from the soda fountain started as seawater from the Gulf of Mexico that morning.

@odiewan67 10 ай бұрын

As always, your videos give great insight to the engineering nuts and bolts of the subject matter. Keep up the good work.

@deancunningham3905 8 ай бұрын

Yes I drank desal water for 5 years. I lived on USNB GTMO. Our water was cut off by Castro after the revolution. I toured the desal plant a few times in school. Pretty cool.

@chytruseczek 7 ай бұрын

Very informative video. I never have put much effort into founding out why they weren't de-salting salt water in africa altho it always bogeled me. Glad to stumble upon this well made piece :)

@ilyaklimenko5666 10 ай бұрын

One thing he forgot to mention is that reverse osmos is extremely reliable. Let me explain, I'm from Ukraine, and more than 20 years ago, my father bought a 20 liter per day plant for $100 (from the US by the way). And you know what? We have not changed the osmosis even once in all the time, only every 2-3 years the primary filters. And the quality of the water hasn't changed. It's really amazing technology and now it's also cheap.

@lynettestrachan8000 Ай бұрын

Hi, I'm wondering whether u or anyone u know who understands the desalination process would consider it at all possible or practical to share this process with other engineers located in Gaza. It's a big stretch but surely there would b people there who could benefit and use that knowledge in some way as drinking water is so scarce. Or even turning fetid water 💧 into drinking water using tablets. Just trying to offer some solution to their current situation which appears dire. And BTW, I pray for ukraine and its liberation from Russia everyday.

@KamiThulak 10 ай бұрын

As a labprofessional I will just copy that sand-in-pot approach for my garagelab. It`s quite smart since its realy stable in holding the temperature.

@TheGraphiteCovenant 8 ай бұрын

I love your videos, your explanations and knowledge. Thank you for sharing

@vampyresmiles713 9 ай бұрын

I'm surprised the desalinization plants don't send off the brine (or even sell it) for sea salt production or something similar. Unless there's other reasons it can't be used for that.

@V8VRUte 10 ай бұрын

The potential for a problem with outsourcing to the private sector, is one that seems to be happening right now in the power sector in my part of Australia. Our energy sector was privatized in the 90's, and since then, the problems with the plants have increased over time, plant maintenance, and regulatory requirements often getting overlooked in favor of maximizing profit margins. Now, the plant owner, after years of neglecting the equipment, when faced with a generator that needed replacing, instead decided to shut down the power station, and simply walk away, now, the remaining 2 stations that service the majority of the state, also have closure dates before the end of the decade, with no talk of replacements other then unreliable renewable's such as wind and solar, which currently make up 21% of the market (except during the summer months when diesel generators are used to offset the demand) These are some of the reasons that for anything utility related, I personally support state or city owned assets, especially for power, water, and communications.

@annamyob4624 10 ай бұрын

Same ol' story. The "unnecessary" costs that get cut by the private sector are long-term vision (designing for the future; maintaining existing equipment so it lasts beyond short-term profit windows; etc), safety, and living wages. Basically the kinds of things you want for your children and your children's children if you're a decent human.

@brunocarvalho5792 10 ай бұрын

This is exactly what I thought would happen, and it is why I was kinda shocked when the video said that it was a good idea to let the private sector take the risk. We are talking about a resource essential for life, the risk will eventually and ultimately reach the population.

@V8VRUte 10 ай бұрын

@@annamyob4624 The other flow on effect since the sector was privatised, and I can only go by talking to people taht have been in this region lot longer than I have, but they say that we've lost SO much in terms of skilled workers and knowledge. Some of the equipment was essentially scrapped, because there was no one left that knew how it worked, or how to repair it. You hear the same storys all over the globe when this kind of thing happens, and profit becomes more impportant than the service it provides.

@kristoffer3000 10 ай бұрын

Example nr; 124634588862623 of Capitalism being awful

@ChaseChippy 10 ай бұрын

@@kristoffer3000but I MUST CONSUME

@FlyTyer1948 10 ай бұрын

Interesting demonstration. I’m glad to learn that San Diego now has a desalination plant. When we visited there in the 1980s, the tap water in our hotel tasted so awful, we could only drink bottled water. Even strong coffee couldn’t overtake the taste.

@RedSaint83 7 ай бұрын

Welp. Now I'm down the rabbit hole. I had heard of seawater greenhouses before, but I really need to learn more now.

@twitertaker 8 ай бұрын

When the video said "Ever heard of promille?" I asked myself if the US has a different way of measuring blodd alcohol. But it seems to be same just as it refers to 0.3% instead of 3 promille as you would refer to it in Germany.

@soupsoup6813 10 ай бұрын

I would highlight the issues the UK is currently facing with private ownership of the water industry.

@KirstyTube 10 ай бұрын

Dwr Cymru / Welsh water are doing fine as they are a not for profit company. I know Thames Water supply a lot more people but it is in a very concentrated area. Lack of investment and upkeep seem to be the major issue and the fact that they have to pay shareholders just means they have not invested enough to keep the system working. So the choice seems to be....gov buying them out with tax payers money that will go straight to the shareholders while the rest of us are paying higher taxes to pay for the lack of upkeep :/

@vacamike 10 ай бұрын

Thanks, Lenin

@soupsoup6813 10 ай бұрын

@@vacamike how childish

@soupsoup6813 10 ай бұрын

@@KirstyTube they too are doing lots of sewage dumping unfortunately, though not the worst

@vacamike 10 ай бұрын

@@soupsoup6813 yeah- looking to tax money as a savior is childish

@DanielClarkeJ 10 ай бұрын

I'd like to know why the "Ocean Vapor Towers" approach doesnt make more sense than these methods, it seems a logical way to get fresh-water from salt-water and it leverages cycles so nature is doing a significant chunk of the work

@glasslinger 10 ай бұрын

It's slow per liter of water treated compared to other methods. Thus for a given amount of water the equipment has to be MUCH larger. (more expensive)

@nahkaimurrao4966 10 ай бұрын

Basically scale, the number of towers you would need is astronomical

@sneediumminer 10 ай бұрын

construction cost vs output. running cost isn't everything

@hedgehog3180 10 ай бұрын

At that point you're basically engaged in a small geoengineering project since you're trying to change the local climate and that is basically impossible to predict because you have to factor in the entire global climate to figure out what will happen. No one in their right mind would sign off on spending millions on a project that you can't even guarantee the outcome of. If a region doesn't get a lot of rainfall then there's some pretty powerful natural forces behind it and it's fairly easy to conclude that humans can't easily influence that. Like climate change is only happening because our entire global civilization is engaged in the same activity and has been doing so for about two centuries so it really isn't easy to influence the climate of our planet. Also there's the fact that you can't necessarily directly use rainwater, we usually use groundwater which has spent thousands of years filtering through the ground to make it clean. Plants that draw directly from sources such as lakes and rivers still do need some amount of cleaning before it becomes safe to drink and it's susceptible to ground pollution, which an area that experiences little rainfall that would normally wash it out probably has a lot of.

@seneca983 10 ай бұрын

Based on this video it seems that reverse osmosis is a *lot* more energy efficient than distillation. It may seem attractive to use sunlight directly for evaporation instead of electricity. However, if sunlight is plentiful it might still be more efficient to convert that into electricity and use it to run reverse osmosis.