Don’t really know how this works but running a desalination plant on the power from mixing fresh water and brine seems a bit like plugging a power strip into itself
they’re using the brine byproduct of the desalination process and you have to do something with that stuff besides just dump it back in the ocean because it’s too salty.
it does seem more like regenerative braking in electric motors than a serious standalone power source.
That part makes sense I guess. But why are they running a desalination plant in a place with fresh water? Unless the “fresh” water in this case is just anything less-salty than the ocean?
article is kinda light on details, it does mention the possibility of using treated wastewater as the “fresh” but not whether this facility does or if there’s some other water quality issue.
i better understand generating power from the brine if you had to dilute it anyway but you’re right it’s odd if there’s a bunch of potable water around.
Another article says that the Fukuoka plant uses “River water or treated wastewater”, so the “fresh” water is not necessarily “potable” water. I’m guessing that the desalinization plant was already in existence in order to meet the water demand of the locals, and the whole idea here is to get a little more value out of the two types of wastewater that the city is already generating before sending them to the ocean.
yeah that’s the most sensible thing. the gradient on brackish river water into the sea is probably too smooth for power generation but maybe you can divert it from further upstream without impacting the environment the way dams do.
Lord Posedion: “but at what cost”
“We have salt lakes around New South Wales and Sydney that could be used as a resource and we also have the expertise to build it,” he told The Guardian.
Yeah that doesn’t sound good for the Lake?
if they’re there because of some quarrying or other extractive industry might as well get energy out of cleaning it up
There’s no such thing as a free lunch
i’ve never gotten this saying cause it’s definitely not true
Really shows how colonised by capitalism their brain is, that they can’t imagine anyone doing something for free, everything has to have a profit motive.
That’s not true. Solar and wind have no potential drawbacks but completely changing a lake from salt water to fresh water is bound to do something negative for something that has made that kind of environment its home.
