Terry Blanton wrote:
> > Just curious as to what the cost breakdown might be in order to make > > desalinization a realistic goal. > > It's already cost effective in certain areas at today's rates. Will > we reflood the Sahara? Yup. It is cost effective in places such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Kitty Hawk, NC for example. It works even better with brackish water from an estuary. Actually the real future is to recycle ordinary water-water, which is to say, <urk> sewage. The cost of the equipment is a big issue. There is a chapter in my book about this, but no cost estimates. Chapter 8. Note that you can trade off energy use for cheaper equipment. Note also that some older desalinations methods use heat (multi-stage flash) instead of electricity (reverse osmosis -- RO). RO uses less energy and produces purer water, but more expensive equipment. A hybrid system might be best with cold fusion. Use the heat to generate electricity, then use the waste heat for the first stage of desalination, and additional heat plus electricity for MSF and RO. On modern cruise liners they have swimming pools full of water, and unlimited potable and bath water, all from desalination with the water used to cool the Diesel engines. It is stored in tanks, often mixed in with bacteria, reportedly. Various on-line sources describe modern systems as hybrid MSF from engine waste heat + RO. On a big ship capacity is 1.8 million liters per day. For agricultural applications, I think you need to reduce salt to the lowest possible level, with RO in the last stage. Otherwise the salt will gradually pollute the land and water table. I think I read somewhere that potable water can have more salt than water used for long term agriculture. I am not even sure that long-term -- meaning decades or hundreds of years -- of agriculture is possible. In the book I assume that natural rainfall will increase and the need for desalinized water will decrease. I think the cost of electricity from the Rossi device, or any cold fusion reactor, will eventually be far lower than Rossi now estimates, for the reasons given in chapter 14. - Jed
