I’ve always wondered why reverse osmosis would not be a viable solution on a large scale
Is it because the brine left over would be in such large scales it would be a issue? Or is the cost?
I worked on Reverse Osmosis plants on ships when I was in the navy. Some of the best water I ever tasted.
There's no silver bullet solution. It needs to be a mix of solutions. On your ship, the water filtered at most was for a couple thousand folks. We're talking about 4 extra zeros for the southwest ALONE.
RO uses 3x as much water to get clean usable water AND you're still left with the problem of what to do with the wastewater. Humans use 100 gallons of water a day, multiply that by millions of people, it's still the same problem.
The technology of the future should focus on minimization NOT maximization. Every technology proposed is maintaining the status quo and as more people get to a "first world" standard of living it's going to get worse, because no one is giving up:
• Meat
• Avocados
• Almonds, walnuts, pecans
• Cars
• Internet
• Fast fashion
Bar none, the biggest thing people could do to save the planet ironically is switch to nuclear power. It has the smallest environmental impact on anything that maintains the status quo as everyone adopts an American lifestyle.
Bottomline, humans are wasteful. Thanos was right. Until individual people realize they have a stake in this and not just corporations, it's going to get worse. People in this very thread highlighted the southwest population has grown 10x in the last 100 years...in the fukking desert no less. That's a people problem not just corporations. It's easy to point the finger there because it means you the individual don't have to stop eating cheeseburgers and driving a v8 everyday
I know all of this because I work for a major plastics manufacturer, previously several food manufacturers and what we do is defined by customer demand, not the other way around.
