this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Article doesn't mention what the unit does with the salt waste.
I support this 100%, but desalination presents a unique problem: what do we do with all the salt? Maybe the unit uses it for something, but otherwise it just miniaturizes a problem that we're already working on.
You put it back in the ocean. Laughable to think you would alter the ocean's salt content this way. All of the freshwater produced would eventually end up back in the ocean anyway.
On the large scale this is true, but the problem is that the concentrated brine doesn't instantly dilute back into the entire ocean. In large quantities, the waste outflow would damage the local coastal ecosystem before it was sufficiently diluted.
What is "sufficiently diluted" this device discharges brine at only slightly higher levels than what it takes in.