New Nano Desalinization Method

lbmouse writes "The Technology Review is reporting that researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have announced a way to use carbon nano-tube technology to reduce the cost of desalination of ocean water by 75 percent over current methods of reverse osmosis. From the article: 'The technology could potentially provide a solution to water shortages both in the United States, where populations are expected to soar in areas with few freshwater sources, and worldwide, where a lack of clean water is a major cause of disease.' The technology may also lead to new ways of eliminating carbon dioxide emitted from power plants."

stop watering your lawn

[Anonymous Coward]

If your short of drinking water in the US.. stop watering your lawn...

Materials science must be the top-level science

[w33t]

I've heard it said that materials science is the slowest science - and it's almost certainly true. It is taking forever to get consumer products from carbon nanotubes (with a few exceptions [blogs.com]).

But all the uses found for a new material and all the new applications discovered - in many respects it certaily seems to be the most fruitful science (at least in the engineering and day-to-day sense).

Re:stop watering your lawn

[pembo13]

But, but. How will the lawns be green???

Re:stop watering your lawn

[SatanicPuppy]

You have a magic well that's not connected to the same water table that everyone in your area uses? Screw nanotech, patent the magic well! That and some magic beans and you could change the world!

Hate to break it to you bud, but it's all the same water in the end. There was a paper company that opened up east of here, and on the day that they commenced operations private wells for 50 miles around dried up, and who got hurt? People who had seen no reason to care because their water was totally different from the water that the paper company was slurping up a million gallons at a time.

Re:could be important for a hydrogen economy

[Surt]

Out of curiosity, why would it be important to purify the water before separation into hydrogen/oxygen? Most of the methods I'm familiar with don't particularly care if the water is pure, the waste rate from impurities is meaningless, and cleaning just means occasional sludge removal.

Percentage salt remaining?

[M0b1u5]

This is all well and good, but does the process increase the efficacy of removing the chlorides in sea water? This because 99.999% is not good enough: if you spray that on your farm - in a few years the evaporating water has left the remaining salts (Chlorides) behind and will have sterilised the soil so that nothing can grow in it.

This would be a major concern in areas where desertification is already rampant.

I have no idea what the accepatble level is, but it needs to be damn low before you can irrigate with desalinised sea water.

Re:Desalinization vs Condensation?

[BigCheese]

This new method should only require pumps. From your description of condensation it requires temprature differentials. That will require power input as well as the pumps.

It may be more efficient (and cheaper) by simply being, well, simpler.

Very important topic

[johansalk]

Just as current wars are fought over oil, wide predictions are that future ones will be fought over access to water resources.

Where does the lawn water go?

[Latent Heat]

I think the argument the lawn-waterers are making is that if they pump water out of the ground and sprinkle that water back on the lawn, most of that water will percolate back through the soil back into the ground water. Whether that argument holds up or not depends on such factors as the rate of transpiration and evaporation off the grass, whether the runoff water percolates back into the ground water reservoir or runs off somewhere else. That paper mill may be sucking the water out of the ground and then discharging it in polluted form in a stream, thus depleting the water table.

I am hard pressed that anyone living where there is normal rainfall for growing grass (i.e. Georgia) and has a water table high enough to tap with a private well isn't simply recycling the water by pumping it from below and discharging it on the surface. In fact, ground-source heat pumps are the next big thing in saving energy resources -- some of the systems are closed loop with a coil to pipe in the ground, other systems are open loop, lifting water from a well and discharging it on the surface. The various state DNR's that issue permits for such open loop systems want you to discharge on the surface -- they certainly don't want you pumping water that you have handled directly back into the aquifer without being filtered through the ground.

I agree that lawn watering is a serious use of resources in the desert Southwest U.S. You can be Fremen in your view of lawns on Arrakis, but to argue the same point on Caladan is stretching matters a bit far.

Getting skeptical of all this nano

[Morinaga]

In quick succession we have stories from MIT and other Labs have discovered new and exiting uses for nanotechnology. They all seem to "discover" a scientific breakthrough. I'm just as excited about this as the next guy but from what I've read none of these discoveries have working prototypes of the technologies they espouse as the next great thing. Seems to me these are all working theories at best.

I really am looking forward to batteries lasting 100x longer, nanopaper and this latest discovery. I just have absolutely no read on how far we are out on practical implementations of this technology.

Re:Huge boon to hydrogen economy?

[wealthychef]

Well, it's not free power by any means, but free power would also have the effect of saving those starving people, by making it really cheap to transport the water to the villages. I wonder what percentage of the cost of storing energy in hydrogen-based fuels is finding good water, I'm guessing it's not the major cost anyhow, so this won't do much for energy, I'm guessing.

Why two words? desalination / desalinization

[schwit1]

As far as I can gather they mean the same thing ... removing water from salt. Does having two similar sounding words to describe the exact same thing add any value to the English language? Why not use just one of the words(somebody choose) and eliminate the other to reduce dictionary clutter?

It reminds me of the contention between regardless and irregardless. Yeah, I hate irregardless too.

Drink your pee

[CrimeaRiver]

Could this be used to filter water from urine? That might come in handy in survival situations, or in closed environments such as habitable space modules. Or simply for weirdo geeks.