Why is desalinization such an expensive and underutilized process? It seems relatively simple, especially in wealthy, modern countries.
>>7775107
It takes a fuckton of energy to boil water.
It really isn't very expensive, just an effect of capitalism and supply and demand
>literally shitting and pissing in drinking water then flushing it down into the sewerage
There is no need for desalination.
the waste produced from it is hard to deal with
components exposed to salt water tend to corrode quickly
I'm just guessing that it isn't cost effective to generate or divert the electricity necessary to run the plant.
>>7775107
I was a submariner in the US Navy. I got to my second boat (my first was a torn apart skellington) just a few months after they installed the new reverse osmosis plants. The RO plants produced something like 80% of what the old desalinization plant did, but every senior mechanic that I ever spoke to swore up and down that RO units were infinitely better because they didn't break down if you so much as looked at them funny. They'd talk about spending half a deployment on restricted potable use (ie no showers for anyone). Two weeks after I got to the command our washer and dryer broke and we couldn't get replacement parts for months. Fuck the Navy.
>>7775107
>simplicity
>somehow being an indicator of operating cost and efficiency
are you by any chance retarded?
>>7775287
To save drinking water toilets are flushed with seawater in Hong Kong. After you have flushed you can tell how the tide is going by the cloudiness of the water.
Whenever there is drought in California I see people still take a bath/shower and I wonder why they don't recycle the wash water into their gardens. Soap is a fertilizer and that is just a bonus.
>>7775107
The amount of energy required to distill water versus the amount of energy required to pump water through reverse osmosis and filtration equipment is much higher making it unable to compete as a manufacturing process on a commercial scale.
This is not to speak of initial investment. On a small scale, distillation makes sense because of the lower cost of investment, technical knowledge and overhead costs. However, a serious mass commercial operation will find that over the life of the operation that in initial investment is quickly outpaced by the operating costs. Thus, reverse osmosis wins out.
It really is that simple, it is all about money.
