Will Turning Seawater Into Drinking Water Help Drought-Hit California?

npr ^

[SkyDancer]

A desalinater the size of Arizona....

[iowacornman]

Demonrats don’t want to solve the problem. They want to control people and get their money. Any one stupid enough to live is the state is overwhelmingly deserving of their capture by communist leadership.

[Truth29]

Gee, that growing population has a lot of illegals in it. Maybe they ought to do something about that.

[biggredd1]

deport about 7 million scumbags and there will be an excess of drinking water.

[Mrs. Don-o]

The Israelis are just now ramping up the world’s largest seawater desalination plant to full capacity.

Their newest plant (Sorek) is producing 627,000 cubic meters of water daily. By 2016, when additional plants will be running, some 50 percent of the country’s water is expected to come from desalination. And check out the price: They're producing it for 58 U.S. cents per cubic meter (1,000 liters, or about what one person in Israel uses per week). It only cost $500 million, which came from private investment, and will be recouped in something like 5 years. California could have done that years ago. But no.

Instead, California authorized the issuance of US $9.95 billion in bonds for the High Speed Rail project which is never going to pay for itself. They could have built 18 major water-desalinization plants for that.

Geez, we should give California to Israel.

[rottndog]

Desal plants integrated with all electric power plants that use seawater for cooling....take the discharged hot seawater from the steam condensers and run it to the desal plant, requiring much less energy to distill pure water from the salt water. Then you are killing 2 utility birds with one stone.

[Kartographer]

This is California we are talking about so can’t everyone just use their EBT and buy Perrier?

[Fungi]

Bingo! Best post in this thread. A thread on desalinization plants in Israel was posted earlier. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3276014/posts

[Mastador1]

Will Turning Seawater Into Drinking Water Help Drought-Hit California?

Gee, I don't know. Can I have ask Israel for $500 Alex?

[ansel12]

See post 12.

[umgud]

Right now, the sources of electricity available to run desalination plants are not environmentally friendly.

About to die of thirst and they're more worried about globull warming.

[Ingtar]

The Arab states allow the consumption of fossil fuels to support the process. California does not, and leeches from the power grid.

[Fungi]

“globull” Saw that. True.

[Nifster]

Did my senior project (forty years ago no less) on a water de-sal plant and its scalability for use along the California coast....The drought then had us with bricks in the toilet tank and other water saving measures. The one thing that California did NOT do (because of all the crazy enviro niuts) was build more dams. They will never learn

[Jane Long]

BTTT!

CA is going to force suffering (taxes/fees/cuts) upon their citizens until the USGov comes in to bail them out :(

[BwanaNdege]

Haven’t the Arab states been doing this for years?

Californians are too busy with Environmental & Diversity problems to take care of a Basic Needs problem they have been aware of for a century or more. Meanwhile, developing countries (with a bit of help from Western engineers and, perhaps, Western money) are addressing the problem.

In 2004, Mrs BN & I were helping at a medical clinic in the slums of Santo Domingo, DR. Every day or so a tiny cabover pickup with a 100 gallon or so stainless steel tank in the back would come by, selling water at $0.05 per 5 gallon jerry can.

The source? A desalination plant on a barge in Santo Domingo, IIRC!

[Fungi]

Hey, it’s NPR, their motto being “all things considered,” or better stated: only what we think you should believe. Truth, objective news? We are NPR, we are above that.

[Scrambler Bob]

This is California we are talking about so can’t everyone just use their EBT and buy Perrier? —

Your idea is great.

Dump that Perrier in the bay, for the Delta Smelt.

Then the farmers can get some water.

Or use desal water for the smelt. Then their population can grow, and vote Dem.

[Carry_Okie]

There is no shortage of drinking water. The shortage is for irrigation.

[Sherman Logan]

A small amount of research, on a topic in which I’m not at all expert, seems to indicate about 3kwh per cubic meter to desalinate water.

That means roughly 2 megawatts of power to run the Sorek plant. Unless I’ve missed something, which is quite possible.