Israel already gets the majority of its water, including for irrigation, from desalination.[1] They achieve this through a combination of conserving and recycling water as well as very targeted irrigation of crops, along with new technology such as the Sorek desal plant. The second generation may be up and running by 2023 [2].
There's an interesting paper [3] about building 40,000 Sorek style plants to sequester excess water in arid areas and avoid problems with sea level rise. Without any savings at scale, this would be around 20 trillion dollars, but that's clearly cheaper than building infrastructure to protect coasts around the world, with the side benefit of creating jobs and food in areas that are in the most need.
I've been working (in the script-writing sense) on a narrative around EarthStations -- molten salt solar towers powering desal plants and green tech manufacturing, surrounded by highly efficient farms, and further out in the ring, forests that eat the desert. Since they are located on coasts, all the infrastructure can be delivered by ships, and all the goods created easily shipped out once they are up and running.
One big technical problem is what to do with the brine -- I'm not sure how much could go into molten salt heat storage. But they could serve as an engine to keep sea levels stable.
This is a longwinded way of saying I think the project in Egypt is a good example of the terraforming we need to be doing instead of dreaming about for a planet like Mars. Even though it is small scale, turning deserts into forests is pretty impressive, and something we need to do learn how to do well to fight climate change.
Karami, A., Golieskardi, A., Keong Choo, C. et al. The presence of microplastics in commercial salts from different countries. Sci Rep 7, 46173 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep46173
“Our brine is naturally sourced from an ancient, untouched sea called the Iapetus Ocean (predating the Atlantic) trapped below the Appalachian mountains. Our salt is free of contaminants and heavy metals that may be found in other oceans. Gleaned from the earth by an underground brine aquifer, the salt is then processed naturally using the power of the sun and gentle mountain breezes.”
If that isn't a fantastically deceptive piece of marketing then I don't know what is. It writes as if other salt deposits didn't originate in some kind of ancient body of water, and it uses the fact that they're harvesting a brine to imply that the entire bloody ocean is still hiding under the Appalachians, so that by buying their salt you're buying "sea salt" (and all the naturalist voodoo that might entail) but without any of the contaminants of modern oceans. Being low in mercury and whatnot seems like a good thing, and their salt is probably fine, but that marketing is something else.
Isn't seawater like 3 or so percent salt? The amount of salt produced seems like it'd greatly exceed demand. Although maybe this would be a better alternative to salt mining, not sure if that's clean or not.
you'll raise salinity at the dump point to toxic levels and mixing it with water by dumping via ship adds so much complexity and cost it isn't even worth writing about
There's an interesting paper [3] about building 40,000 Sorek style plants to sequester excess water in arid areas and avoid problems with sea level rise. Without any savings at scale, this would be around 20 trillion dollars, but that's clearly cheaper than building infrastructure to protect coasts around the world, with the side benefit of creating jobs and food in areas that are in the most need.
I've been working (in the script-writing sense) on a narrative around EarthStations -- molten salt solar towers powering desal plants and green tech manufacturing, surrounded by highly efficient farms, and further out in the ring, forests that eat the desert. Since they are located on coasts, all the infrastructure can be delivered by ships, and all the goods created easily shipped out once they are up and running.
One big technical problem is what to do with the brine -- I'm not sure how much could go into molten salt heat storage. But they could serve as an engine to keep sea levels stable.
This is a longwinded way of saying I think the project in Egypt is a good example of the terraforming we need to be doing instead of dreaming about for a planet like Mars. Even though it is small scale, turning deserts into forests is pretty impressive, and something we need to do learn how to do well to fight climate change.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the...
[2] https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-ide-wins-sorek-2-desalina...
[3] https://f1000research.com/articles/5-889