California City Considers Restarting Desalination Plant To Fight Drought

First time accepted submitter SaraLast (3619459) writes in with news about Santa Barbara considering the restart of its desalination plant. "This seaside city thought it had the perfect solution the last time California withered in a severe drought more than two decades ago: Tap the ocean to turn salty seawater to fresh water. The $34 million desalination plant was fired up for only three months and mothballed after a miracle soaking of rain. As the state again grapples with historic dryness, the city nicknamed the "American Riviera" has its eye on restarting the idled facility to hedge against current and future droughts. "We were so close to running out of water during the last drought. It was frightening," said Joshua Haggmark, interim water resources manager. "Desalination wasn't a crazy idea back then." Removing salt from ocean water is not a far-out idea, but it's no quick drought-relief option. It takes years of planning and overcoming red tape to launch a project. Santa Barbara is uniquely positioned with a desalination plant in storage. But getting it humming again won't be as simple as flipping a switch."

Comments

Re:And with that yoiu get POWER!

[ArhcAngel]

No? It's exactly the reverse. This takes *HUGE* amounts of energy.

Electricity is one form of energy used to power desalinization but certainly not the only form. But you are correct in that the use of electricity to desalinate is not very efficient. A focused solar lens array much like the ones used in solar electric production would be more efficient AND the resulting steam could actually be used to produce electricity as a byproduct. Not enough to be considered an electric generation facility but something is better than nothing.

Re:And with that yoiu get POWER!

[Walking The Walk]

... or you use pumps to pressurize a bunch of salt water and use a membrane to filter out the salt. Again pressurizing the water consumes a lot of energy.

Couldn't you just drop a container into the ocean, one with only two openings - one with your membrane for salt water in, the other opening for desalinated water out? The deeper you put it, the more pressure outside the container that pushes the salt water through your membrane. Then you could use a low power pump to slowly remove the clean water through a hose attached to the other opening.