Why Aren't Desalination Plants EVERYWHERE?

this video is sponsored by lark what if i told you we could solve all of our fresh drinking water problems and produce enough battery materials to build hundreds of thousands of evs every day all without any mining at all water makes up 71 of the earth's surface which is great because it's fundamental for all life on this planet but there's a problem roughly 97 of that is salt water in our oceans the remaining three percent is fresh water but it gets worse 69 of that is stored as ice largely at the poles so it's a small wonder there's any fresh water at all luckily it's a really big planet but why can't we just drink salt water i mean it's not as tasty as fresh water but surely we could make it work right no and here's why water makes up about 70 of the mass of the trillions of cells in your body but if you get dehydrated that percentage goes down and bad things happen when you drink pure clean water the water concentration is higher outside your cell and through a process called osmosis to reach equilibrium water passes through the cell membrane leaving you hydrated but when you drink salt water even though the bulk of water in your body is higher the water concentration is actually lower than inside your cell so no matter how much salt water you drink osmosis will force fresh water inside your cells outside to help reach a water concentration equilibrium oh science you cruel mistress it's truly a case of water water everywhere but not a drop to drink the problem has gotten worse and worse over time as we keep pumping fresh water from underground aquifers for our various needs like drinking water and water for irrigating crops at a rate faster than nature can replenish it from sources like rain this is basically the problem we have in all aspects of our environment with billions of people each needing copious amounts of water and other resources we're using more than we put back and it's just a matter of time before we run out humans use about 4 trillion cubic meters of fresh water annually enough to fill the entire grand canyon to the brim agriculture alone can consume between 75 and 90 percent of a region's water supply but at least in the case of fresh water engineering and technology have provided us a solution it's called desalination and it's a process of extracting the salt out of salt water yielding pure clean drinking water technically we could have desalination plants along all of our coasts producing clean water to pump back into our lakes and aquifers so why don't we why isn't every country building desalination plants as fast as they possibly can after all many project that the wars of tomorrow could be fought over clean water not oil or other resources to understand why desalination isn't more popular today let's start with the evolution of the technology the principle is actually relatively simple get the salt out of the water but in practice it can pose a bit of a challenge see salt water dissolves easily in water and when it does it forms strong chemical bonds which are very difficult to break so with desalination there are two broad categories the more old school method is thermal desalination essentially boiling water into vapor and leaving the salt behind prior to the 1980s over 84 of all desalinated water around the world went through this process but there are a couple of problems with thermal desalination for one water has a very high latent heat of vaporization that is the amount of energy required to turn liquid water into a gas this stubbornness is hugely valuable as water becomes a great temperature buffer and a very stable liquid most of the time but it also makes boiling water really difficult so to boil sea water and separate it from the salt requires a lot of energy that power often derives from burning fossil fuels which you know contribute to climate change the second issue relates to the byproduct of desalination a thick goopy salty watery mixture called brine this intense concentration of salt and other minerals is often pumped back into the ocean as facilities generally have no use for it then it sinks to the sea floor where it wreaks havoc on ecosystems by destroying oxygen levels while also obviously spiking salt content the more modern method of desalination is membrane-based desalination often called reverse osmosis remember osmosis from earlier how our cells hydrate here salty water is forced through an extremely fine membrane that separates the water from the salt and other impurities like pouring your pasta into a fine mesh sieve to let it drain but at a microscopic level in general reverse osmosis solves many of the issues associated with thermal desalination the process is cheaper and more efficient advances in membrane technology require less pressure and therefore less energy to filter the water making them generally greener still even the process of reverse osmosis can be energy intensive an ro facility in kuwait expends more than 889 gigawatt hours annually purifying their water it's an expensive country is happy to fund as obviously water is a vital resource however if not for their massive oil revenues it's likely that a country like kuwait could not be able to make such an investment we have to start seeing clean water for the precious resource it is that's why i'm thrilled with our sponsor this week lark i talk a lot about what i love but you know what i hate plastic one-time use water bottles the solution is purifying water at the source while you've probably seen a picture like this before what makes lark unique is its pureviz technology that bass your picture and water in uvc light cleaning itself every two hours you ever notice how your old water filter has a smell after a couple of weeks well that's what that uvc light will fix this means lark eradicates up to 99.9999 of bacteria not to mention lead chlorine mercury cadmium copper zinc and vocs there's even a smartphone app that tells you how much water you're drinking when the system needs to be recharged and when the filters need to be replaced i use my lark pitcher every day but my favorite product is this their lark filtered bottle i used to struggle avoiding plastic water bottles on travel but now i can fill up anywhere subscribe for automatic filter replacements take the guesswork out of clean drinking water and save over 500 a year on plastic water bottles not to mention all that landfill check out the awesome line of lark products using our link in the description huge thanks to lark and you for supporting the companies that support this show not every country has rich resources to export but there is a third option currently under development that may soon make its debut in one of the most innovative if controversial city projects in history introducing neom city this sprawling megacity will cover over 10 000 square miles or nearly 25 000 square kilometers of the red sea coast in the northwestern province of tabuk saudi arabia equal in size to 33 manhattan the sheer scale of this project is dwarfed only by its share of controversy which i think is a topic for another day the city is designed to integrate renewable and sustainable technology at every level of its infrastructure creating a complete circular resource economy cloud seeding technology to produce artificial clouds a jurassic park style island with actual robotic dinosaurs and over two-thirds of the land allocated to natural growth so that nature will only be a five-minute drive from the metropolis the city will also be completely independent of existing state energy systems providing a hundred percent of its power from renewable sources but what's most impressive is how this futuristic utopia plans to provide water to its many residents in the middle of a scorching desert with no natural fresh water in general saudi arabia is home to the 10 largest desalination plants in the world ranging from 600 000 to 1 million metric tons and providing water to 50 percent of the region's population neom's water solution however applies an entirely new approach to desalination in line with the city's general philosophy of energy conservation and renewal the process is technically a thermal plant but instead of deriving power from fossil fuels the system will harness the power of the sun the structure will consist of a massive hydrological sphere basically a huge dome made of glass and steel seawater flows into the dome where it gets heated by parabolic mirrors placed around the sphere capturing sunlight and focusing them into the dome to vaporize the water as water vaporizes it leaves the salt behind and then precipitates back down as fresh water being located adjacent to the red sea the facility can produce loads of fresh water without consuming any electricity or producing any greenhouse gas emissions well except for the massive pumps they'll have to pump this water around but still a massive reduction in energy and leftover brine the plan is to extract leftover salt concentrate then process it to obtain useful substances here's a list of various elements found in the ocean and their concentrations measured by parts per million i want to bring your attention near the bottom of the list to these elements that we can use for either energy like thorium and uranium and also battery materials like lithium nickel and cobalt this synergy of producing fresh drinking water and finding amazing applications of these trace elements of huge importance around the world will be what pushes this technology forward the estimated 16 000 operational desalination plants located across 177 countries generate roughly 95 million cubic meters of fresh water every day assuming the same density is pure water that's more than 100 million tons of salt water processed every day enough to extract 10 million kilograms of lithium enough to build 142 000 tesla model 3s every day yeah the sooner we stop seeing this as a waste product and seeing it as a gold mine the sooner desalination projects around the world will ramp up meanwhile neosystem only uses 100 renewable energy but it doesn't stop there the city's infrastructure is designed to repurpose any potential wastewater which will be fully processed to generate electricity fertilizer and reusable fresh water for irrigation the goal is to achieve zero waste and a circular waste economy to inspire other global leaders in addition the water filtration process could eventually lead to hydrogen fuel production on site as well which has been touted by many including us as a possible game changer in the future of energy things like hydrogen fuel cell boats and airplanes as you mentioned neon city has faced a lot of controversy and we aren't exactly proponents of the concept until a full assessment of its impact is established by using solar energy and parabolic mirrors to heat and desolate water can be studied and applied by any country around the world especially in arid regions near oceans where water is scarce this technology is new and largely unproven as such there is a whole host of questions to consider how much will it cost to create a solar thermal desalination plant how much maintenance will be required and how will levelized operating costs per unit of clean water compare to other forms of desalination so to answer the question that we asked at the very beginning why aren't desalination plants everywhere well there are 16 000 in operation today which is probably more than you were thinking but it still pales in comparison to how many we probably need going forward and why we don't have more it just comes down to cost the cost of desalinating water currently is really high but what if we could change that around and make this a gold mine opportunity to get raw materials from our oceans produce clean drinking water all powered by the sun and i think that's exactly why this is an absolute game changer and only time will tell how this plays out but i really do hope that a lot more countries around the world start to invest in this sort of technology one thing is for sure the opportunity is massive and the need is dire let's not wait until a dystopian future where war is your wage for clean drinking water let's start getting clever about some new solutions today and while we're at it let's consider the whole cradle to grave aspect of this operation it's not good enough to dump this highly damaging brine back into our oceans we need to do better we must do better but what do you guys think is desalination the way forward to resolve global water shortages are you ready to book a room in neom city let us know in the comments below but before we go we have just enough time for the comments of the week this one comes from growaznik he says bro shave i don't know what is about my face that warrants this level of attention from people about shaving but maybe i will we'll see you'll have to tune in and subscribe and that one is in regard to our wind turbine recycling video which we'll have a link to here and the second one is from our is solar worth it five years ago video lou says thumbnail five years later video date five years ago you're right lou we'll have a link to the original video from five years ago and also the new one that we made from 10 years later but that five years ago solar panel video was what spurred this entire channel it was our first hit video and it kind of made this channel what it is today thanks so much for watching check out our other videos and we'll catch you guys next week

Channel: Two Bit da Vinci

Views: 2,425,190

Keywords: neom city, desalination of water, desalination machine, desalination of seawater, clean drinking water, reverse osmosis, can sea water desalination save the world, seawater desalination plant, future water wars, future water technology, two bit da vinci, Why Aren't Desalination Plants EVERYWHERE, water desalination, desalination plant, desalination plants, how desalination works, future of water desalination, salt water, Why Don't We Have MORE Desalination Plants, desalination

Id: 9LNgmVvm-gY

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 07 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/MarcTurntables]

Nuclear desalination might be the best solution

[u/bafangoolNJ]

https://www.source.co/how-hydropanels-work/

This could help.

Also studying how Israel recycles wastewater for agricultural purposes. Oddly they have now helped Jordan with their agricultural water demands because they have a surplus of water.

Desalination works but it's also bad for sea life because the salt goes back into the ocean at higher rates post osmosis.

[u/JonLane81]

:9070: