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Massachusetts Considering Desalination Plants
Iphtashu Fitz writes "Despite a reservoir system containing some 412 billion gallons of water for Boston and surrounding communities, some eastern Massachusetts towns are facing water shortages and are now considering water desalination plants as a new source of fresh drinking water. The city of Brockton, 20 miles south of Boston, has plans in the works to build a $40 million plant and could begin construction as soon as this September. Currently there are fewer than 100 desalination plants in the US and most of them are in smaller communities, but that seems to be changing. The largest desalination plant in the country is located in Tampa, FL, which expects it to provide 10% of the citys drinking water by 2008. California also has at least 10 large scale plants on the drawing board. Some environmental organizations like the Conservation Law Foundation dispute the need for desalination plants however. They argue that many water shortages could simply be solved by better conservation of existing supplies."
Wouldn't it be just easier to buy bottled water than build a whole plant ??
what harm is there from desalinaiton plants? sea level dropping? why are environmental groups protesting it?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
The city of Brockton, 20 miles south of Boston,
I hear that Ogdenville and North Haverbrook have also installed desalinazation plants and look....it put them on the map!
Conservation only works when people contribute to the effort. These days people use water for household uses, lawns, washing cars, etc. Once we are used to having it on demand, it's kinda hard to think about conserving. Ususally it's too late when a shortage occurs. Might as well start building the plants now, by the time they are finished being built, they will be needed.
--
Retail Retreat
They should do what I saw in family guy. They just had a machine combined an oxygen molecule with 2 hydrogen. The water it made was really good.
They should try talking to the arab states which produce 60% of the worlds desalinated water . They are even considering injecting the desalinated water into the ground to raise the groundwater level.
Powerplants have done this for years with thier incoming and cycled water, but there is plenty of room in the stack and obviously plenty of heat left. Most of the "smoke" you see is water vapor. You don't get water vapor unless there is a big heat and/or humidity difference.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
What do you suggest?
Dude, desalination plants allow you purify and use SALT water as in SEA water-pollution has nothing to do with it.
When did Massachusetts get so evilly ambitious?
worked in simcity, dont see why its a bad idea IRL. I just hope they disable natural disasters though...
At the moment the biggest problem with desalination plants is not just their high build cost, but their high operational cost.
When using technologies such as reverse osmosis the energy costs for pushing high volumes of water at high pressures through the membranes is prohibitive, not to mention the wear on the equipment it's self. In a traditional water treatment plant most of the filtering is done with gravity.
Life is Short and Hard like a body building Elf
I seem to recall a story from the western U.S. where the city instituted rigid conservation controls. The result was that they were successful.
Well, sort of. The subsequent drop in water usage also resulted in a drop in water revenue and sewer revenue (water usage was metered). The city ended up losing so much money due to not keeping up with fixed costs, that they tossed the measures out the window. They needed the money more than the conservation.
Desalination on a large scale is absolutely necessary for humanity's survival over the next 100 years.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
You can try to be as environmentally friendly as you'd like, but 6 billion+ humans are still going to fuck up the planet.
I've always wondered if it was feasible to create clean desalinated water as a by-product of a nuclear power plant. Since turbines need to be powered by steam anyway, why can't they find a way to recycle this water? I guess too many people would be waay to paranoid about such an idea though.
Most desalination is done with reverse osmosis anyway. It's much more energy efficient than distillation.
Because ocean water is so plentiful, there is absolutely no danger in reducing sea level (the very idea is absurd), and the only enviromental issue is the huge amount of power needed to get the salt out of the water.
...in other news, the Conservation Law Foundation has renamed itself the "foundation for making obvious statements pretaining to the environment"...
seriously, though, while conservation would make pretty much everything last longer, and stretch existing supplies, it ain't gonna happen. Personally, I would be happy with desalination plants instead of yet another dam(n).
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'll wager that millions of dollars are spent cleaning and transporting water in that area (and all over the US), where half of it will be used to water the lawns of suburbia. I would like to see more effort to reduce usage before plants are built for desalination.
I used to live in the area (south of Boston, but not in Brokton, thank goodness)..as long as I can remember, we've had water bans during the warmer spring/summer months. It was almost frightening watching the local resevoirs literally dry up.
Where do they plan on getting this sea water though? I sure hope it's far far far away from Boston Harbor...It's green from all the polution and I'm afraid desalination is only a small part of the process of preparing it for consumption.
Oh if only we hadn't dumped all that salt into the oceans!
Just another example of putting WAY too much emphasis on the "common" and none on the "sense."
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
"City officials dismiss worries about water privatization, saying that a 20-year contract ensures affordable water rates and that the desalinated water will only supplement more traditional supplies."
Is twenty years really all that long when talking about public utilities? Also, what's the projected growth rate for this place over the next twenty years? Is the supplementary nature of the desalinated water the plan for the long term or just initially?
Water is a hell of a commodity to control; even if you have to wait twenty years to actually control it.
The problem with the plant here in Tampa is that while it may be the largest, it isn't doing anything except sitting there. The filters have turned out to be too expensive and need replacement too often to make it worthwhile to turn on.
The Quabbin Reservoir is big(412 billion gallons) and supplies Boston and some neighboring towns. The MWRA (Mass Water Resources Authority) also was responsible for building the outfall systems required to handle the use of this water. The problem isn't the existence of the water but the pipes and connections. Some towns see the MWRA as costly and are exploring other means. I doubt that 16 mile pipes and the costs of desalination are cheaper for Brockton than an MWRA hookup, but that doesn't figure sewer costs in. GIGO.....
at least they did in sim city, iirc.
Add to that the fact that we are experiencing a building boom due to high house prices (think 900 square foot house for $250k) and we anticipate extensive demands on town water services.
That is why our water commissioner formally proposed a desalination plant for our town.
Despite the fact that the state has cut funding for just about everything, our kids are asked to bring paper, tissues and other basic supplies to school, and we had to shut off the town street lights and close a library to save money the town focus seems to be upon building our way out of this hole :(
At least elections are next tues.
Oh and on a related note, I took a vacation recently to the Carribean and the place we stayed had desalinated water....it tastes awful.
You misunderstand... Desalination does 'clean' water, but specifically it removes the salt from seawater to provide fresh water for costal communities. This is a good thing because only about 1% of the worlds water is fresh water easily avalible for our use. The only environmental issue is that desalination requires huge amaounts of energy. This is not so much of a problem if the plant has its own small nuclear reactor or solar power setup.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I think we have a new winner for most idiotic post on Slashdot....
I've thought about this some, as a way to purify water entirly, use electrolysis. Put the energy in, electrolysis is an extremly efficient process, recombine the H and the O (burning or a fuel cell) reclaim some of the energy from that, and your left with pure water.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Which method is cheapest overall?
Reverse osmosis has been shown to be the most economical in many cases due to its lower energy consumption, leading to lower unit water costs. However, the process has higher up-front investment costs compared to thermal processes. Its unit water costs are primarily determined by membrane life and energy cost (Ericsson et al., 1987; Wade, 1987). Reverse osmosis plants have flexibility of operation in the face of fluctuating water demand and benefit a little from economies of size.
Several economic trends for multistage flash distillation plants are apparent: a relatively low investment cost, benefits from economies of size (relative to other processes), site specific costs (for example pretreatment requirements, energy costs) have a direct affect on the unit water costs, and low flexibility in response to variable water demand (meaning that freshwater production cannot be adapted to fluctuating demand ) (d'Orival, 1967; California Coastal Commission, 1993). The main economic drivers for multistage flash distillation are costs of materials and energy, and increasing plant capacity to take advantage of economies of size (Water Corporation, 2000).
Comparing multistage flash distillation and reverse osmosis, the distillation process has been the preferred method due to its reputation as a mature and reliable process. However, reverse osmosis plants are replacing the older multistage flash distillation plants of the Middle East and being the first choice for desalination implementation in Australia. This is due to their simpler operation, reductions in energy consumption and ultimately, cheaper unit costs of fresh water (Anon, 1999a; Glueckstern, 1999). The overall cost of fresh water from a reverse osmosis plant is often less than half of that produced by means of distillation (Water Corporation, 2000). As technical advancements of membrane processes improve their costs and efficiency, they will continue to be the preferred choice for countries moving into desalination.
Presently, the reported costs of desalinating water using current technologies fall within the range A$0.80/kL to A$2.10/kL, depending upon the process, location and the potential for blending with marginal quality groundwater (Water Corporation, 2000). These costs do not include disposal or distribution costs.
Read more here.
I support the use of desalinization as a source for water, it is better ecologically and economically, than taking your water in from other places, just look at Mono Lake. I'm suprised that our technology in desalinization isn't better considering the largest Desalination plant in the country hopes to provide only 10% of it's city's water supply by 2008!
am i the only one here who read this abstract and thought they were playing SimCity 2000? god, the flashbacks...
i said, "NT"
Many people seem to be completely unfamiliar with all the techniques of water desalination. Saltwater Desalination: Chapter 1 will educate them. There are many techniques including Distillation and reverse osmosis Hopefully the flaming back and forth will cease. Of particular interest is this chart which shows that distillation consumes much less power than reverse osmosis.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I grew in Santa Barbara. In the early 90's we had a killer drought- our water supply (Lake Cachuma) went down to about 3% capacity. Low-flow toilets and showerheads were distributed freely and it was a ticketable offense to water your lawn between 11am and 4pm. So the taxpayers sank like 32 million bucks into a desal plant. I believe it was ON THE VERY DAY the plant was to go into operation that IT POURED, and the thing has rarely, if ever, been actually used. Guess it'll do as a backup...
Do the rich snobs who were against the proposed wind farm have a problem with unsightly desalination plants being built in the same state? Has anyone checked?
Maybe the MA legislature could pass a law requiring those rich snobs to only drink expensive, bottled water-- that way they don't have to sully their lips with "commoner's" water, and there's more of it to go around for us mere mortals without having to build some structure that will mess up their view.
To save 400 billion gallons, Boston and outlying areas would need to replace 10 million urinals, and while it's doubtful they have that many (that'd be about 1-2 per capita
just a thought.
They argue that many water shortages could simply be solved by better conservation of existing supplies.
Well DUH. The people aren't trying to solve a 'water shortage' problem. They are trying to solve a "demand exceeds supply" problem. They don't have a reason to deny people the water they want to use if the people are willing to pay a higher cost. Eventually they hit a price point where people will naturally conserve water.
Water is a reusable natural resource. It's not easy to come up with a reason to conserve it, since they are already conserving it with water treatment plants.
Think of the water system as a closed system. The only unaccounted for openings are evaporation, and letting it go into the water table (ground, streams, ocean, etc). Otherwise the water is contained entirely in storage, pipes, and treatment plants. To offset evaporation and adding to the water table a system must have a certian amount of intake from wells or another water source. A water shortage doesn't necessarily mean that not enough water is being produced, it means that the system has reached its capacity --> the treatement plants are supplying less water per day than people are consuming, and they are draining (slowly) their reserves of treated water. Alternately more and more water is being stored in additional piping added by new neighborhoods/buildings or evaporated/drained into the environment by new lawns and pools and not enough used water is getting back to the treatment plants. The wells and other 'new water' sources are too stressed.
There are two ways of combating this - either take in more water from the environment, or increase the efficiency of the treatment system (more plants, better plants, etc) Obviously the second problem can only be solved by getting more 'new water' into the system. In many cities it makes more sense to place a new well than to upgrade the treatement plant, especially if the treatement plant isn't at capacity. In many cases a well cannot be placed because it puts too much strain on the water table, so a desalination plant makes very good sense.
The environmental people are not complaining so much because they feel we are destroying the planet as they are complaining because it's a symptom of our consumerism which they fundamentally oppose on principle. If they can get everyone else to 'think green' in general then they hope that other problems which do directly affect the environment will also abate.
Oh, and yes, desalination does stress the water source. If they do not process the salt into other forms then the source many become too salty near the plant. If they do not replace the salt then it may not be salty enough. Either way, a desalination plant affects the water source. Whether that's bad or good is subjective.
-Adam
Do you all realize just how much power it takes to de-salinate seawater on this scale? You practically need a dedicated power source. What would make sense here would be something renewable like wind power.
Nothing pisses me off more than when I heard of that offshore wind farm near Nantucket and how the locals (headed by the Kennedy folks in their compound) are NIMBYing it.
Oh well... I guess we can always generate more power with coal or nukes, eh?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
To say that Massachusetts labour unionists are influential in government would be to say that the Antarctic continent is freezing cold.
Your analogy FAILS IT! You're supposed to use understatement, like so:
To say that Massachusetts labour unionists are influential in government would be to say that the Antarctic continent is "chilly."
Furthermore, please note that it is "case IN point," not "case and point."
Conservation in America?
Haw Haw Haw Haw Haaaaaw
The only time people start conservation is when there ain't any more.
Seriously, though. We don't need to build a plant; we just need to raise prices until consumption drops to a sustainable level. Then use the money to build an aqueduct (sp?) into Canada until there's a long term solution.
And also, take away the price breaks for the fockin golf courses and force them by law to use recycled sewer water (which costs a fraction of desalinization).
"Desalination on a large scale is absolutely necessary for humanity's survival over the next 100 years."
Clean water: The new Oil.
As long as population continues to increase, conservation and other increases in efficiency are only short-term solutions. Sooner or later you MUST increase the supply, or you run out.
Look at California's electricity problems for a good example of where this leaves you.
Given the enormous amount of power involved, large-scale desalinization really only makes sense with nuclear power.
Most nuclear plants work by boiling purified water, using the steam to turn a turbine.
What if, instead of running it as a closed loop, with the enormous cooling towers, we combined the two together, so that you have water desalinization and nuclear power in one?
This could be, in essence, "free" water!
The main consideration is dealing with the large amount of mineral deposits...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
... making less people???? Seriously... as long as population increases, we are on (as Cats says in Zero Wing) the way to destruction. Eventually we run out of something that can't be replaced. Land. Water. Air. The planet has finite resources, we can not have a birth rate > the death rate forever.
I built mine years ago in SimCity. Get with the times, man.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Isn't New England is among the most water-rich areas of the country? I agree that conservation before increasing supply makes a lot of sense.
They argue that many water shortages could simply be solved by better conservation of existing supplies.
...Showing their real aim is not conserving resources, but controling people.
Big deal. Just build a nuclear power plant next to them. Problem solved. Oh, and the excess energy can be used to power the baby seal slaughterhouse and for rendering whale blubber.
Unfortunately, the majority of water policy in the U.S. (and elsewhere) has more to do with politics and business than with science or common sense. For an excellent intro to the history of water-related politics in the U.S., you should read the book Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. Can't recommend it highly enough.
Nature purifies water by a combination of wind and solar power, is there no way this can be mimicked on a large scale?
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
From the CATO Institute:
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
In Seattle there was a problem with the toilet buyback and other conservation measures: they worked too well. Rates had to be increased.
Is it just me, or does this sound like a headline from the newspaper in the original Sim City? :)
Right up there with "Metroville Builds Airport".
gadgetophile.com
Wouln't the greenhouse gases create global warming and then replace the used sea water by melting the icecaps?
Ahh I see they are already trying to deal with global warming. burt would using sea water for drinking water do enough to keep england from taking a bath?
I dunno. Ask California. California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico really aren't fit for human consumption, nevertheless, the gov't dammed up most of the rivers out west to make it hospitible.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those..
By the time you drink a glass of water, it has passed through fifty thousand fish bladders since the time of Christ.
C|N>K
why not use brita filters? =P
But not at the scale that these places are currently supportig--and definitely not at a scale the average North American (Minus "North") would be happy with.
Meh. It's time for another civil war.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
With a source of water like this, they should not need these plants, the reservoir system should be enough. Of course there are probably issues such as building new pipelines and what not, but I believe that it would be a heck of a lot cheaper then building Desalination Plants in the long run because of energy usage.
Plus, I worry that this will become another Big Dig fiasco. But I might be saying this only because I am from Western Massachusetts and I don't want to pay for someone else's water supply.
So if the energy cost is lower, what about the other things. My not very good understanding of RO implies there's filters involved, which would get consumed in the process. Especially since salt is very small, they'd need to be quite fine filters, and thus expensive. And at millions of gallons a day, replacing them regularly wouldn't be cheap.
Well at least it is more apealing then recycling thier own sewage. I hear some places do this. make you kinda sick thinking about drinking it.
Of course privitized public infrastructure works better.
Consider the example of the good Senator Frist. Over the last 10+ years, his HMOs have bankrupted and shutdown over 1200 innercity hospitals, killing over 2,000,000 Americans (being mostly from America's poorer districts, they were mostly guilty of the many crimes of poverty anyway), and at the same time his HMOs decreased payroll costs, increasing doctor-worker efficiency, and increased profits. Now, that's how to get the real Economy started. (On the other hand, Saddam Hussein, unlike the good Senator Frist, was pure evil. He was trying to build universities and hospitals for the poor. This, along with Saddam's refusal to acknowledge the first rule of Paul Bremmer's American Democracy (e.g. that Iraq, as must all nations, borrow their formerly sovereign currency, from Wall Street banking houses), was at the essence of his evil. As for the feet of the al Quida terrorists sticking out of the ground in mass graves in Iraq, dug by Saddam himself, one is reminded of the number of black feet that were sticking out of the ground in the mass graves maintained in the back lots of the Texas prison system during W.'s leadership.)
As for desalination, America's moneychangers should empower Archer Daniels Midland with sufficient paper fiction, emitted as a debt against unborn of the world, that Dubya and Duwayn and their buddies, can get control of our fresh water supplies as well as our farms (having bankrupted our family farms, in the model of Sen. Frist's HMOs). That way, Dubya and Duwayn can control our water supply too. Only that way, will the economy improve.
Don't be a lout! Privitization is truthful.
I think california in particular is in a unique position to make de-sal water, they got a LOT of hot days in the desert where the water could be desalinated using solar thermal techniques, and the water they use now is mostly piped in anyway from far away..seems like that could be coordinated somehow. Biggest expense might be pumping the salt water to the plants,maybe, I don't know how far inland you have to get there before there's enough wide open desert space to set up shop. If they make the de-sal water just burning finite quantity fossil fuels, I think it's a mistake, especially there with who knows how many ergs, therms or btus however you want to measure it solar heat going to waste, near free for the taking. And solar is clean fusion reaction, too, we already got fusion power, which people tend to forget a lot.
I would *like* to support greater useage of uranium-based nuclear heat power, after they figure out a better way to deal with the waste. So far, not impressed with the efforts.
what them things?
Remember that Massachussets gets a lot of snow in the winter. It's not like the salt will go to waste.
Next time you're standing in front of one (assuming you're male) you can read the specifics, but toilets are required to use 1.6 Gallons, new urinals use less. However it does make the calculations easier, 40,000 flushes is 110 flushes/day, which with 1440 minutes/day is only a flush every 13 minutes in a 24 hour facility.
The primary use of water in the U.S. is irrigation, not human consumption. Everything from lawns, golf courses to the vast farmlands of California use immense quantities of water. The Colorado, Rio Grande, The Salt, and other rivers of the West are not pumped dry to supply drinking fountains.
The issues raised by this have filled many books and fueled everything from local animus to international disagreement.
Usage of the Colorado River alone has fomented court squables between competing states and international disputes with Mexico.
Use less water.
We can thank Ted Kennedy for pushing for this initiative. He is tired of salt water ruining his clothes when he goes driving.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Boiling a pound of water at atmospheric pressure takes roughly 1000 BTU's, and there are 140,000 BTU's in a gallon of fuel oil. So a gallon of oil can boil 140 pounds of water or about 18 gallons. That is a lot of oil.
But if you boil a pound of water to remove the salt, condense it, you are throwing away all of that heat released when it condenses, almost as much as required to boil it. How can you recover that heat since you are going to boil at a slightly higher temp and condense at a lower temp and heat cannot move uphill?
One technique is multi-effect distillation. You boil and then condense at atmospheric pressure. The condensing at atmospheric pressure is hot enough to boil at some pressure below atmospheric. You condense and then use that heat to boil at an even lower pressure. You keep going until you are what ever vacuum pressure boils water at room temperature. The same 1000 BTU's to boil a pound of water is used several times to boil several pounds of water in several "effects" (stages of the still).
The other method is mechanical vapor compression. If you take the vapor from boiling and compress it in an centrifugal compressor, it can condense at a somewhat higher temperature, and you use that heat to boil the water feeding the compressor. While it seems like pulling yourself up from your bootstraps and violating a thermodynamic law, it is not that much different than a heat pump.
There is some minimum energy required to desalinate water, it is much less than 1000 BTU per pound, and if you know the osmotic pressure for that salt concentration, you take that pressure and the volume of water you want and use work = pressure times volume. That energy is not without consequence, and that is why you probably want to desalinate brackish (slightly salty -- often available from wells when pure water is not available) than going for sea water.
Also, there is some effort in approaching the thermodynamic "reversible" minimum energy of desalination. The multi-effect stills and the vapor compression still have to move large amounts of heat through heat exchangers at small temperature differentials. With reverse osmosis, you probably are pumping harder than the bare minimum to oppose the osmotic pressure so you get enough fluid through the membrane to make it worthwhile.
Multi-effect distillation is probably the way to go for big plants, vapor compression for mid-sized, and reverse osmosis is really probably only effective for small-scale stuff because the membranes are expensive and need replacement. Even with what I said, the energy needs are not trivial -- perhaps you want some kind of cogeneration where you run a multi-effect still from the waste heat stream of a gas turbine.
Apparently we haven't wasted enough money, and we need another big public works project. More corporate welfare- just what the country needs
"A year ago, I was close to perfecting the first magnetic desalinization process. So revolutionary, it was capable of removing the salt of over 500 million gallons of sea water a day. Do you realize what that could mean to the starving nations of the earth?"
Nick:
"Wow, they would have enough salt to last them forever."
God I love that movie
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
The problem isn't the lack of water, it's the overpopulation of the area. As the article stated there is already a large reservoir system, and there is a large number of natural fresh water sources. I live in the area in a town that has over 100 fresh water ponds. The population, although having not risen to the point of being overcrowded, has gone past the point that nature could easily support. Mankind doesn't develop in accordance with nature, adapting it's environment rather than adapting to it, and this is a result of and step in that process.
I don't try to be right, I just try to make people think
They argue that many water shortages could simply be solved by better conservation of existing supplies.
Yes, and nobody would starve if we all gave food to the hungry, and nobody would be poor if we all gave someone else some of our money. But it's not going to happen, is it?
These people are fucking morons. I'm sorry. I'm all for conservation, but I'm all for a reality check, too. You can't get everybody to conserve. As long as we're capitalists and we can just pay instead of working, we will continue to do so. That is irrefutable reality, no matter how rosy you WANT the world to be.
I actually started thinking about the problem about 5 years ago when the tap water in the area went from perfect, to tasting like bleach. Bottled water is expensive, and what are we paying the government and the water company for anyhow?
Basically, the way we need to do it is to have a second set of water lines. The set we have right now can be used to carry low-grade water. It will be the kind of water you use for your toilet, washing your hands, watering your plants, etc. That should not be unhealthy to drink, but it can have all sorts of additives, and generally taste awful.
The second set of pipes will be high-grade water. Like it used to be, through them the water company will pump pure, clean, quality water. That will be what you drink/cook with. People would save a fortune on buying bottled water, or water filters.
What's more, there's really little change from what we have now. Except, the fresh water won't be mixed with the recycled water, and the water company can be even more aggressive in recycling water, since they know that it's not for human consumption. No more need to spend a lot on making recycled water taste slightly less repulsive, they can just keep a tiny quantity of water clean. Your water bill will certainly be a lot less too, since the water you are spraying on your lawn doesn't have to be good enough to drink.
The improvements in water fountains boggle the mind.
After all, providing clean drinkable water is perhaps the #1 task of any government, anywhere, and they've really dropped the ball lately. This is their primary job. Babies are getting serious medical problems because pregnant women drank tap water. This is really serious stuff.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
For the non-sim city economists? Please? :)
- i lived in Mass. back in 1987... - you'd have to be insane to live in that state! - moved into a house in Braintree, MA, and two days later, the tax collector was at the house, asking: 1. how many people live here? 2. what are number of vehicles per each occupant, and what the license plate numbers of each vehicle? 3. how many cats or dogs do you have? p.s. they tried to tax me for one of my pets who passed away - i Snail-Mailed back, "The Dog is Dead!" p.s.s. never again will i live in that state!
These bozos should instead learn to conserve water. Millions of gallons of fresh clean potable water are wasted every day in typical American usage.
Do they have usage rates that increase exponentially as individual home water usage increases? Not likely.
Do they have ANY conservation program? Doubt It!
Given that this is Massachusetts the possibility that this is a giant pork project with massive 'Sopranos'-style kickbacks involved should not be discounted. If it were Rhode Island, then it would be the most-likely reason that this plan for such an expensive solution to the water shortage problem is being put forward.
Now that the 'Big Dig' project is winding up, there has to be a new avenue for big action. Massachusetts is always up for a big marginal public works project with lots of 'opportunities'.
It has been for four hundred years. Since the city fathers of Salem 'did good by doing well' selling off the conficated property of the burned witches for a toasty profit.
Fuck Massachusetts! If you live there, get a life. Get a future. Leave!
There was a study done (sorry, forgot where I saw it) that concluded that almost everyone cannot tell the difference between even "low-quality" tap water (they used garden hose water) and expensively branded bottled water anyway. All the bottled water I've tried doesn't seem to taste particularly good anyway (some I think tasted worse than my tap water). Of course, nothing I've tried comes even close to a fast-flowing gravel-bed mountain stream.
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
When did the terminology transition from desalinization to desalination? Too many people have a problem remembering how to spell the former? All through the eighties and nineties when everyone here in Florida was talking about the technology, the name was always desalinization. This new term is new to me.
In Los Angeles, which is in a desert, water prices are over twice that of Boston. So desalinization starts to look good.
Power consumption is a problem, but not a huge one. Water must be pressurized to about 1000PSI to get it through the membrane, so you can work out the energy cost from that. (Hint: it's the same as the energy cost to lift the water to the top of a column with 1000PSI at the bottom, which is about 2000 feet.) Reverse osmosis membranes now last for five years, so maintenance is less of a headache than it used to be.
There's no particular advantage in producing "low quality" water via reverse osmosis. You have to get most of the solids out to prevent crudding up the membranes, and the membrane stops almost everything bigger than a water molecule.
Reverse osmosis plants also generate brine, which is not too much of a problem if you're alongside an ocean, but can be a huge headache if you're drawing water from a brackish well and want to purify it.
Both wind and solar are non-storable (unless you use very expensive batteries).
This is a perfect example of Massachusetts leaching nature on the union. They lobby the federal govt to provide them with billions of dollars to produce things like, a tunnel underneith the entire city, with their justification being the overwhelming traffic problem in downtown Boston.
Having lived and driven there for years, I can attest that there are dozens of cities with far greater traffic woes than Boston, NYC being the most obvious front runner.
The question is, who pays for the Desalination Plant? The answer is simple, its the same people who paid for the Big Dig, The Federal Govt. In other words, people in Iowa et. al. The federal govt posts billions to pay for it and has the state govt cover a negligible amount. Why? There are dozens of states with far more serious water shortages. Arizona, New Mexico, California to name a few, who would benefit greatly and would quite frankly flourish if given the necessary investment.
Massachusetts doesn't have a water problem. Massachusetts doesn't have a traffic problem.
Massachusetts doesn't have to pay for their 10 mile tunnel traffic reliever.
Massachusetts is a LEACH!!
Wouldn't this just make clean water available to the rich and keep the poor people from getting any? It might be better environmentally for there to be fewer people, but this sounds like a really bad way to go about it.
just cover all fresh water sources with giant concrete domes so the water won't evaporate away. :-) ).
That might save some water -- although I'm sure that would be way expensive and in many/most cases way impractical ( Gee...lets try covering the Great Lakes
I'm curious as to how much water is actually lost due to evaporation. Being in southern california, I see the aquaduct that comes in from the Colorado river through the scorching desert all uncovered -- I'm sure much of it must evaporate away by the time it travels all the way from the California/Arizona border to Los Angeles. Not to mention the other aquaduct which comes in from the north.
anther fine example of John Kerry and Ted Kennedy wasting public money.
Agriculture in Europe is so fucking rinky dink and on such a small scale, I'm surprised it's even mentioned. They are practically gardeners in comparison to farmers in Canada and the US. If you noticed, usage in the former USSR isn't much lower.
You are right. I would rather see more conservation. We in New England could start using better technology that uses less water, and we need to develop more! I don't want to live on a world where we have to use moisture farms.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Aqueous Solutions (pdf) is a chapter from Natural Capital. It explores various options for using water efficiently.
Did you know that agriculture uses four fifths of the water in the US? That a short visit by a conservation specialist can cost-effectively save 10 to 20% of the farmer's water use? (i.e. they start saving money right away!).
In urban settings, much of the peak demand for water is used in landscaping. Education and better pricing structures can also dramatically reduce the need for water.
Conservation is so incredibly cost effective that desalination plants should really only be a very last resort. Please read the above linked chapter, and tell your elected officials to do the same thing before they go on wasting millions of dollars.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
'nuff said
FUD
Quit spreading this "big lie", fluoridation is safe and prevents tooth decay. Excessive fluoride does cause mottling, but that is only an unsightly condition, not a health problem. In fact people with motting have less real dental problems, particularly if they also brush and floss once in a while. In any case the amount of fluoride added to drinking water is enough enough to cause mottling.
I live right next to Brockton. Brockton is a poor city. It gets most of its water from Silver Lake a very affluent community. There is alot of politics involved in this decision mainly when we have water bans.
The affluent claim Brockton is wasting their water while those in Brockton Claim the Affluent are wasting their water watering their lawns.
I belive this solution will ease some of these troubles.
Personally I don't know who is right in this I just can't wait till I move to Cali and get away from Mass Politics.
It's all Politics
This hardened them, another process, soaking pits, kept at 600 F for about 3 days gave the parts temper.
When I think about it what else is molten at 1300F, cheap, easy to melt, in which another metal object can soak in and not combine with.
This was in spring of "73", we used powdered carbon to sprinkle on top to retain the heat, the electrodes(to procuce heat) were about 4-5 inches in diameter.
ANY moisture of any kind water, oil, grease, would cause pops and crackels when in contact with the molten salt. Hard to avoid and I burned a longsleeve shirt to short sleeve in about a month, did had long sleeve asbestos gloves but I did not use them, they were clumsy and only the gloves did not burn, everythng else did.
$2.45/hr. ACME HEAT TREAT Fort Wayne IN. I haven't forgoten you Bob, what you taught me about not trusting, simple operating machines, well nothing like living to old age, smallworld, maybe someday...Fred
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
like Tatooine?
I don't try to be right, I just try to make people think
Lawn watering, toilets, and such typically represent well over half the water use in a house.
A not-huge 3500 gal container can hold rainwater, reasonable drain water (shower/bath), etc.
"slow sand filtration" seems to be the common way to cleanse it. It need not be potable, just "clean enough". A minute on google for "grey water sand filteration" find this link and others.
Boston gets rain year 'round. Roofs conveniently shed their rain down just a couple gutters.
For lawns, it's easy. For house use - well we don't plumb houses to have multiple water sources. Yet.
Or you could just ban golf courses in boston and save billions of gallons and cleanup the fertilizer laden runnoff from unnaturally short, unhealthy golf greens.
15 min shower = 600 gallons
60 gallon tub = 480 pounds
So, how many bottles of Disante water would it take to fill a bathtub? :)
Desalination sounds like a good idea to me. It's not like the Atlantic is going away any time soon and while expensive to start up and maintain, you'll provide proof against fresh water shortages and drought.
This doesn't mean that it will be cool to water your lawn when they kick in the desal units to make up for a lack of fresh water - and your bill undoubtedly will spike regardless.
However, more communities that invest in desal plants (those near bodies of water that make that feasible) will feel less impact once the big squeeze comes as companies like Enron finish gobbling up fresh water utilities.
Originally it was "desalinization", but the news anchors couldn't wrap their mouths around yet another multisyllabic word, so it was shortened to something they could pronounce.
A special thanks to the same semi-illiterates who brought you "nuculear" and "jewlery".
...never heard of 'em.. need to find out if there's any nutritional value to these things. If so, market them as A-trendy exotic organic low carb healthfood (fibril soup made with pure glacier water and like ..tofu or something) and B-cheap animal feedstock. Can't miss, turn a liability into a profitable asset! Sieve the stuff outta the water before it plugs up the membranes! 3????
Profit!
This sounds as if 412 B gallons isn't enough.
Massachusetts has a limited number of towns which are part of a water co-op. These towns draw their water from the quabban reservoir, one of the largest man made reservoirs around. The state bought up four entire towns (at a cost of billions) back in the 1950s and turned them into the reservoir.
Towns, like brockton, which aren't part of the water co-op, get the shaft. Those which ARE part of it (like Boston, where I live), get the nice fresh, billions of gallons of water!
I dunno. Ask California. California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico really aren't fit for human consumption, nevertheless, the gov't dammed up most of the rivers out west to make it hospitible.
I read somewhere that 80% of the water use in California was for agricultural irrigation - so it seems to me that if environmentalists wish to preach about conservation, they've got bigger priorities than the average consumer.
Quoted from article: They argue that many water shortages could simply be solved by better conservation of existing supplies.
I agree. Couple of things - in coastal areas, do you really need to shower in fresh water? With most new construction around here using plastic hoses instead of copper piping, the biggest residential cost would be an incremental one to install a second (stainless steel) hot water heater. Besides, salt water showers and baths are really nice - or maybe salt water is just a novelty to me because I live inland. Installing the head-end pumping stations, water mains, etc would be a horrendous task, but many cities are already faced with the task of digging up their streets and replacing century-old water mains.
I see the primary uses of this water being the shower/tub and refilling the toilet.
Of course, if you're handy and want to save a few bucks, *anyone* can install a gray-water system like mine. Reusing the washing machine's water saves me $200/year and gives satisfying soapsuds when I'm doing Number One.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Some environmental organizations like the Conservation Law Foundation dispute the need for desalination plants however. They argue that many water shortages could simply be solved by better conservation of existing supplies."
I really really have faith in the environmental groups that ignore the fact that we have an increasing population...
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC would produce both electricity AND fresh water (from condensate). Building an OTEC plant big enough to be worthwhile would be an enourmous construction expense, though. Payback for return on investment would take forever, but there would be no pollution produced.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Yeah, right. Reminds me of the navy showers. You'd just barely turn on the water, and the officer responsible for the conservation of water would yell at you that you're using too much!
Honestly, for every person who takes great pains to conserve, there are at least 100 who take 30 minute showers, leave the faucet running when brushing their teeth, flush the toilet 2 or 3 times per use, leave the hose running outside when washing the car, run the dishwasher with two glasses inside, and put their washing machine on oversize when washing two underwears.
And you don't have to go to extremes to get the point, either... When we had a drought a few years ago, they told us we could only use 40 gallons per day... well, that's barely enough to run the washing machine. So what's the point? Just generate more clean water and be done with it.
I haven't done any research on this, but it seems a bit tough to believe. Even if desal. were supplying all of Boston's water, the volume of pure water taken out should be miniscule compared to the local ocean. I realize that water currents determine how problematic this is, but unless you build it in a harbor or something (and it won't go in Boston harbor), I can't imagine that would be a real problem.
When will people learn that the environmentalists sloagan "we can conserve enough to survive on" for whatever resource is completely detached from reality?
Conservation advocated by the big eco groups would result in:
-no economic activity
-no jobs
-imploding social spending system
-dramatic lowering of the standard of living
There are actual reasons for conservatio and alternative fuels:
- remove dependence on middle eastern oil so that terrorist funding and radical Islam funding Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, etc do not have money to fund terrorists around the world.
- remove dependence on foreign governments, e.g., OPEC members, for energy and trade dollars - this protects the US economy and national security
- remove dependence on buying product from dictatorial, totalitarian, religious totalitarian, and communist countries - there is no need to fund the US enemy's economies
You can still make your point, but find a better example.
Tech Public Policy stuff
About 15 or 20 years ago, a large reverse osmosis desalination plant costing about $400 million was built near the Mexican border on the lower Colorado River. The intent was to meet treaty requirements to reduce the salinity of the water flowing into Mexico. I think that it was to be gas-powered.
I don't remember whether the failure to put it into operation was lack of funding or bad choice of technology. Every couple of years the topic comes up here in Arizona and it's always said that it would be too expensive to put it into operation.
I don't know whether the Mexican government gave up on the treaty or whether the necessary people have been bought.
With a five or six year drought now in effect, one would expect some constructive thinking, but it doesn't seem to happen.
We have golf courses up the wazoo (more per capita than anyplace else in the world, I believe), mostly using grey water. Every once in a while some developer will sneakily start pumping groundwater and then there's bad publicity and usage is sometimes actually changed.
Do an all-words search on "delsalination Colorado River" and you'll learn more that I remember about what went wrong. Sad, sad, sad.
My family of three uses less than 700 gallons of water per month. We have a composting toilet, an Oxygenics shower head and water-efficient appliances (made by Miele). The graywater (all our effluent) goes through a planting bed where we grow ornamental plants, herbs, miniature fruit trees, etc. From the planting bed, the effluent goes to tree irrigation. We're very comfortable.
Look, it's trying to think - Albert Rosenfield
In West Texas and Mexico, solutions are not coming entirely from scientists and engineers.
Officials from both countries are beginning to price water much closer to its actual cost,
rather than the artificially supported and politically expedient previous cost levels.
You find alternative methods become cost-effective when costs are real!
Some would say (Paul Krugman among them) that George Bush's fiscal irresponsibility will result in three of the four things you're talking about:
- no jobs
- imploding social spending system
- dramatic lowering of the standard of living.
So, under the Bush plan, we're about 50 years from living in a third world country: 1% with all the loot (Jeffrey 'lunatic' Skilling among them), the rest of us barely getting by. Now isn't that comforting, all you 20-somethings?
The healthiest way (as usual) is somewhere in the middle, but nobody likes the middle because you end up having nuanced beliefs and your opponents call you a waffler.
My father is a blogger.
How about putting it in a box and selling it to someone that does not live next to the sea? They have to eat salt too. Also, I'm told that cold state have to throw salt on the roads to keep them from icing. Nah, that would never work. I'll just have to salt my flower garden to avoid really high blood pressure. Thanks for the insightful post. Salt, what a horrible, deadly pollutant.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The low tempature is below freezing about half the year in that area.
.sig
Seems like a perfect candidate for freeze desalination to me.
-- this is not a
John Kerry and Ted Kennedy are the senators who represent the interests of Mass in the federal government.
They don't concern themselves with local graft and payoffs.
Plus neither of them have the time for local matters anymore except the minimum number of traditional ceremonial functions that all senators do.
Marin County (north of San Francisco - the other side of the Golden Gate bridge, for those not familiar) has been considering Desalination recently too. Currently they get all their water from either 5 rain-fed lakes (which have been the primary source of water for ~100 years) or the Russian River in Sonona County. The strong anti-growth movement in Marin over the last 20 years has ballooned suburban sprawl in Sonona County with SF commuter homes. Sonoma county's own water needs thus preclude Marin getting more water from the Russian in the future. During the late 1970s drought a water pipe was installed on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge to bring in water from Contra Costa county in the east. That pipe was finally removed in the 1990s when they started to retrofit the bridge (which has been literally falling apart).
I see two potential problems. You need to generate a lot of electrical power compared to the distilled water you seek to generate in order to get a meaningful recovery of the 1000 BTU/lb back as mechancial work. The second problem is that to get the best possible fraction of mechanical work back out of the otherwise wasted 1000 BTU/lb, you are going to have to feed a high pressure/high temperature boiler with salt water. Usually you want to feed the boiler with treated water, perhaps reverse-osmosis purified water, to avoid scale build up.
What about a multi-effect still - don't you feed that with brine and get scale build up? Anytime you are evaporating salt water you are going to get scale formation, but I imagine that at lower temperatures and pressure it is easier to control scale by frequent back flushing operations.
To get the maximum thermodynamic usage out of burning a pound of fuel, you want to burn that fuel at as high a temperature as you can and then perform a series of near-reversible thermodynamic processes on it down to your heat-rejection temperature. In a no-cogeneration system, you would burn fuel to take water to the critical point temperature and pressure and then cascade it down effects until it is a vacuum pressure and the temperature of cold ocean water, and the temperature differential across each effect would be just barely enough to get practical levels of heat transfer.
I am suggesting that it may not be practical to run effects at very high temperatures and pressures on account of the need for scale control, in which case you would run a steam power plant on a closed-loop cycle fed with distilled water and use that temperature drop to generate electricity until you are at a temperature at which it is practical to run a multi-effect still, and at that point use the remaining temperature drop in several effects to generate distilled water from brine. I am suggesting that such a cogeneration scheme would get the maximum amount of distilled water per pound of fuel as is practical and generate the maximum amount of electricity as a byproduct.
That's why Coke and Pepsi have to add some minerals to Aquafina and Dasani (it is made by completely purifying ordinary tap water then adding a specific mineral blend to it... you didn't think it was spring water, did you?) :)
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I hope the planners in Mass take a real good look at the Tampa plant. This plant has loads of problems and lawsuits have followed along contractors going bankrupt, etc. This plant has not met expectations for production, blame is flying around regarding the membrane filters. Dont know the whole story, but read here.. http://www.tampabaywater.org/WEB/Htm/News/news.htm
If the filters used are any better then my pool filters in terms of lifetime and longetivity, I would like to know. Of course they are different, but in my experience, filters work, but they are expensive and they do break down for various reasons. Great when they are new, but hold on to your wallet when they need to be replaced.
In the case of Tampa, they insisted on drawing seawater fom the Tampa backbay, an area which is undoubtedly high in levels of organics, silt and other foulants. It seemed to me they would have done better by processing sewage.
Right. How could desalinization have anything to do with that? Dipshit.