From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sat Feb 23 2002 - 20:28:59 MST
Andrew Clough wrote:
>
> At 03:37 PM 2/23/2002 -0800, Spike wrote:
> >
> >Isn't the Colorado River water fully utilized? I don't think
> >that water is dumped into the briny deep anymore.
> >
> >The problem is that we think of water as free. If fresh water
> >had a price tag associated with it, we might move to stop
> >the waste. Likewise with sunlight: practically unlimited
> >wealth, being spilled upon the ground. spike
>
> You know, you can make a lot of energy by passing the fresh water entering
> the sea through an osmosis membrane.
Yes, about 1 megawatt per cubic meter/sec. The problem, of course, is in
the osmosis membrane. Natural water isn't at all as pure as distilled
and distilled saline, and so there is a significant technological hurdle
to jump in producing membranes that are durable for real world
applications, which don't consume more energy to produce than they
generate on site.
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