Reading the paper like I always do, I read up on yet another infuriating article: states in the west and southeast want to take water from the Great Lakes. As crazy as this sounds (it is crazy), this got me thinking. With water shortages plaguing so many parts of the country, why hasn't the idea of desalinization plants caught on?
I first remember desalinization plants from Sim City 2000. If the U.S. were to use such facilities on a large scale, coastal states wouldn't need to rely so much on the few rivers and freshwater lakes in the regions. Not only would these plants provide people with fresh water, but one of the key by-products would be ordinary table-salt. Selling this could offset the production costs quite a bit.
The only major problem with this I can conceive is supplying power to these plants--especially with the whole energy crisis thing. This could be solvable with say, more Nuclear or Solar power plants. Couldn't it?
ID:36179
 Oct 28 2007, 10:14 am
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The process is really not cost-effective, but what do you think distilled water is?
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We could use something like that in Utah. The only water we get is from the Colorado river and we had a drought for like 5 years straight just a little while ago.
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CaptFalcon33035 wrote:
The process is really not cost-effective, but what do you think distilled water is? Water that's been distilled, like just about all drinking water in the world. Distilling is the process of boiling the water to separate the bad stuff out (which is also done to sea water to remove salt, but this is just telling you your term is too general =P). Then you filter it a few times and drink it. | |
Of course, this is probably not as effective as machine desalination, but it's how the Earth does it, so it must work...lol