Many people claim that table water is overpriced by a lot and a simple math indicates that.

I've read that desalinating 1 liter of saltwater costs around 1-4 cents (USD). But in the average market one liter of table water easily reaches 1-2$. What makes for a possibly 100-200 times more expensive end product?

Transportation should be a small factor since we get food for decent prices and it's also bulky and heavy. For example people transport 1 kilogram of bananas from Ecuador to my country 7613 miles away and the end product costs like 1.5-2$ :). Taxes are like 20% on the final price.

The only thing that kinda could explain it is a huge markup by the government via excise taxes (similarly to gasoline) due to water regulations, but I've never seen any data suggesting that the selling of table water in shops brings in lots of cash daily... It's not purchased, as much as gasoline, but water is the one thing literally everyone needs.

Also who needs to regulate that much seawater when there is plenty of it? It's not like desalination plants are build on protected freshwater rivers :D.

Also why are desalination plants not the biggest sellers of sea salt if they produce so much of it?

I know that Consolidated Water (ticker CWCO) is perfect for what I am asking, but I want to research other similar companies and I am having difficulties with that since most companies do many additional things like wastewater cleaning, storage systems etc.

CWCO currently has 32 PE ratio which might be expensive, but it has several projects on the horizon with great revenue.

I'm very interested in the topic of desalination. One issue I don't really understand is the argument around the impact to the environment. I get that discharging brine into the ocean creates an environmental problem. I fully agree that we'll need to figure out how to deal with those problems and mitigate them. What I don't understand is how the environmental impact of our current water usage/transportation gets completely and utterly ignored.

A perfect example of my argument is the Los Angeles aqueduct. Exporting the water from the Owens Valley to the Los Angeles basin has created one of the worst environmental disasters in human history. An entire valley was turned into a desert over about 20 years and has remained a desert for the last 100. Local humans, fish, birds, and plants have suffered immensely as a result.

Owens Lake, once a navigable body of water, now dry, produces the 3rd largest source of airborne pollution in the world in the form of toxic dust storms. In order to mitigate this particular problem, LADWP has spent upwards of $2.5 billion dollars of the last 20 or so years in dust mitigation. I don't understand how spending that kind of coin on dust mitigation makes any sense at all when desal plants to replace the flow of the aqueduct could have easily been constructed with the same funds.

If the construction of the Los Angeles aqueduct were held to today's environmental impact standards, I don't believe it would have ever been built. In my estimation, any statement of environmental impact of desal, has to include the benefits of the re-allocation of existing water. LADWP could very well return the water to the Owens valley and fix what they broke a long time ago. The increase in land values and the sale of said land back to the public would help offset the cost of the desal plants as well.

I haven't studied other sources of water for SoCal like the Central Valley or the Colorado River, but I'd have to imagine similar findings, especially for the Colorado.

I view the environment as a wash, leaving only the question of sustainable energy to run desal plants. Help me out here folks, what am I missing?

Greetings

I am trying to create a 3D model of Multi-Stage Flash main Components ( Chambers, Brine Heater, Condensers, Tank ). I hope to 3D print it on a smaller scale ( sufficient for a 120 cm x 80 cm table ).

I am trying to get *reasonable* dimensions between all components and then scale it down for my required size for 3D printing, is there any good resources that guide me into getting these dimensions?

unfortunately for me. most literature work that has been done on MSF tends to focus on process design. Mathematical modelling.Design Analysis ..etc but not the actual dimensions of the structure itself :) . Any ideas how can I achieve my humble goal? that would be highly appreciated

Since no MSF 3D model is available online. I will be happy to share the model with GrabCad Community ( https://grabcad.com/library ) and making it available for all.

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Thank you

Looking at what CO2 certificates contributed to the industry (e.g. ClimeWorks) I’m wondering if something similar can help eg desalination become an investment case again and spark startup projects in that area.

What do you think?

I recently saw some documentaries about desalinization.

What are the plans for safely disposing of the "salt", things distilled out of ocean water?

What about managing pollution from burning fossil fuels?

What the plans to protect ocean life from the machines?

I've been mulling this over in my mind for a while, but what would be the negative impacts of say, running an oil pipeline from the Atlantic Ocean deep into the Sahara Desert? It would create a salt lake, sure, but wouldn't the sea water eventually evaporate and lead to climatological changes in the area? Beyond contaminating ground water and or aquifers, what are the drawbacks to this?

It’s cheaper to bottle and ship water from Fiji than it is to desalinate because of huge energy cost. That barrier is about to evaporate under the new fusion breakthrough!!