Getting Fresh Water From The Ocean - My Idea

[csp4.0 1]

To desalinize salt water, you'll need a heat source which should come as a boiler, you'll need vast amounts of energy to power that gigantic boiler. i.e. a mini-nuclear power plant. You pour salt water into the boiler, then turn up the heat. The steam should be collected and condensed to create pure water and the leftover 'brine' could be sold.Has anyone thought the idea of using raw 'materials' to create water? like combining hydrogen with oxygen atoms. That test facility in NASA actually creates rain because of the mixing of H and O

[NNH1254 0]

I think I misunderstood you, but if we just left a barrel out in Iraq we'd have a barrel of salt. You'd need something on top of it for the water, and it'd all need to be set up for every barrel, and you'd need to get the water from the ocean, and then all around the water-barrel-plant, and then back out wherever, and it'd all take up a lot of space. Solar panels would take up a lot of space too, but when we run out of oil we'd have a lot of space in Middle Eastern deserts with roads connecting them all because of where the oilfields used to be.

[galexcd 0]

Well I'm sure you've all heard and said "if we run out of lakes etc we can get water from the ocean!" the problems is of course money because it costs a lot to heat the water and get the salt removed. Well I say either a)Leave a barrel of water of water out in the desert or iraq or some other really hot place. Or b)Use a ton of solar panels. This is still just a very small/insignificent/almost pointless idea because it would still cost a lot of money and take a lot of time. Well if you got any efficient ways of desillination and destilling water that may or may not be "better" than mine tell me! (to me the desert water-heating idea seems like it would cost less)

You have very interesting ideas, but the fact is that it doesn't just need to be heated to get rid of the salt. What heating does is separates the salt and the water, because the water starts to turn into a gas. The temperature needs to be above boiling. And then you need a tube coming out of the container of saltwater, going up, into another container which is cooled for the water vapors to turn back into water. Even if this was possible to be done in Iraq or some other hot place, you would get hardly any water out of it. Think about it... One barrel of water compared to trillions of people in the world.

As for the solar panels, solar panels are cheep, but it wouldn't help really. Solar panels output electricity, and you would need allot of electricity to heat enough water to suffice just one city, yet alone a state, or a country.

I liked reading your ideas, but I don't think they would work. Keep up the ideas though.

[amit nigam 0]

hi friends,sorry dazappa... i would beg to differ with you on both fronts....first of all that heating in deserts issue...there are many problems in it....first of all as posted in last post the amount of water needed is too much for total population that this thing is not practical...secondly if we think for once that its possible then what about cooling it down back to water as pointed in last post...third one is the political issue... as we see there are so many wars been fought over petrol then can you imagine what would happen if a bunch of countries hold the key to lives of the people of whole world....you see you can live without petrol...though you will face too many problems but still somehow you can manage....but what without water.... so if the water resource will be in the hand of just a few countries then i think it will be a very precarious situation....also if after all that we assume that ok water is being treated in deserts then can you imagine the cost of transportation....it would make it non feasible at the outset...as far as your solar cell thing is concerned i feel that that is also not possible, atleast in the near future...because of such low efficiency of solar panels they are not even able to provide the target set for them of electricity output of the world even today...so i don't feel that it will be possible to have such solar cells which can generate electricity to provide water for the world...i am placing my bet on nuclear fusion....i feel that within the next 20 years generating electricity through fusion will become feasible and profitable and then we will have almost unlimited source of energy....then we can easily use that electricity for desalineation.....that is what i feel.....if anyone disagrees with me then please do write...i prefer critics more than followers...since critics make you learn a lot...ok bye friends...keep writing...

[runescapeguy 0]

Well it is easy to get water from the ocean it is in fact clean safe and not hazardus project in the beginning and if and when we come in contact with such problem as scarce water in the developed world we will start using it from the oceanes however there is another big problem which will happen oceans will become more and more salted and by that ocean currents will change affecting the climate of the world in many different ways this might be real problem because europe might end up like cold land and even further tornadeos and so on.So extensive use of such water is really dangerous for the hall life or for the mosr of it in the world.

[Ishbir 0]

Yeah, Desert heating would cost less but who would take so much of water to the deserts? I wonder God takes it but will he? I recently heard about Solar Guyser which uses Sun Power to heat water. There is a lot of direct sunlight in Sahara. Why dosen't the Arabic government put some of them there and all the electricity made from them used to heat a tonne or more water on a large scale. Just a thought. The government of my country is pretty useless, does nothing except eating and farting!

[master_bacarra 0]

one way of getting fresh water from the ocean is by freezing it. i think someone mentioned that you could get it from the polar caps. yes indeed. the water that you get from the ice on the polar regions are pure. once the water comes to the polar caps and freezes, any impurities are taken away from the water. i believe my marine science prof told us that this is one of the techniques used to make juice concentrates.so there you go. well whichever process takes faster will be most beneficial to humans.

[Tetraca 0]

There are salt water refinement facilities out there. The cost of maintaining them is usually what makes them unattractive, IIRC.

[nol 0]

You could say a lot of things like this..You could say why not take out all the gold while your at it? But there will always be the same ammount of water that was here 10 trillion+ years ago. Its called the water cycle, it will never leave our earth, it can't.

[srujanlive 0]

Well did you consider thae costs of actualy getting water till there...

[salamangkero 0]

Has anyone thought the idea of using raw 'materials' to create water? like combining hydrogen with oxygen atoms. That test facility in NASA actually creates rain because of the mixing of H and O

Hmmn... I once saw a TV documentary about fuel cells. It basically is a fusion reactor for hydrogen and oxygen. It is purported to be cheaper since the ingredients can be readily drawn from seawater. Of course, it's clean since its bi-product is just plain water.

Now, I've been thinking, we expend energy to desalinize seawater, right? How about we expend energy to completely break down seawater into hydrogen and oxygen, in other words, fuel cells? Then, we use up the energy from these fuel cells? I dunno, cars, household appliances and stuff. Lastly, instead of just releasing the "waste" water back into the environment, what if we collected it and subject it to the usual purification techniques? (perhaps to a lesser degree, we could probably just filter it to render it potable)

Of course, I know we'd still end up expending massive amounts of energy but the point is that we still get some energy back. For desalinization, we'd throw away energy and all we get is a glass of water. Fuel cells, on the other hand, means we'd throw away energy, get some back and also get a glass of water.

What do you guys think?