Post by jacob naviahttp://www.newsweek.com/nasa-california-has-one-year-water-left-313647
Ted Cruz Tells NASA to Stop Worrying About Climate Change and Focus on Space
http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/ted-cruz-tells-nasa-to-stop-worrying-about-climate-change-and-focus-on-space-20150312
If temperature is too high... BREAK THE THERMOMETER!
:-)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-23/saudis-start-production-at-world-s-biggest-desalination-plant
The world's largest desalination plant produces 264 million US gallons per day.
The Ras al-Khair desalination plant is a hybrid plant that uses heat and electricity to desalt Persian gulf water at a rate of 264 million US gallons per day. It uses waste heat from the production of 2.6 GW of electricity, and uses a combination of heat and surplus electricity to desalt water.
http://www.water-technology.net/projects/-ras-al-khair-desalination-plant/
Most very large plants uses multi-stage evaporation, especially if the salt is to be recovered. Reverse osmosis plants are energetically more efficient, however, they have a higher capital cost, higher operating cost, due to frequent replacement of reverse osmosis filters, and a shorter life span. You also produce a brine output with RO which must be discharged back into the ocean well away from the ocean intake. The brine volume is added to the fresh water volume in handling water, which has an energy and capital cost as well.
For this reason, in very large installations, multi-stage evaporation is favoured over RO. Though the use of RO on this scale is a testament to the advances in RO technology. So, RO is an up and coming tech. Has been for the past 20 years.
With a 2.6 GW electrical output you nave 6.5 GW thermal input. The electricity is sold, and the heat is used in a multi-stage evaporator to make fresh water. Unsold electricity fires up the RO plant and adds to the water supply made with waste heat. In this way the heat is mitigated.
In the Gulf States you typically have gas which is flared since the cost of transport is too high. For local consumption this is captured and burned. To produce 6.5 GW thermal input you need 481 tons of gas per hour.
Now California uses 57 GW of power according to the DOE EIA. The water used to cool these plants is withdrawn from fres water supplies. It is not reused for public supply. Clearly there is a benefit if;
(1) Sea water is desalted using waste heat,
(2) The desalted water simultaneously cools the plant,
(3) The desalted water is used for public supply,
(4) Waste water is used to irrigate farms,
(5) Irrigated land is within greenhouses to reduce evaporation,
(6) Irrigation waste is recycled,
What is the impact of this?
Now, LA uses 7.3 GW of electrical power.
We have 2.2 GW of power comes from the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power plant. Another 2.8 GW comes from the MOss Landing Power Plant, 2.0 GW of power comes from AES Alamitos Gas Power plant, 1.5 GW comes from the Ormond Beach Power plant.
These are places to start.
So, we make use of the heat in these power plants, to drive a multi-stage evaporator, while cooling the plant and arrange to buy surplus electrical power when available, to drive RO filters, we will produce 22x the output of Ras al-Kahair plant - 5.8 billion gallons per day at a cost of $154 billion which translates to $8.38 per 1000 gallons at typical discount rates.
The California PERS has over $1 trillion in funds that it could bring to bear on a project such as this.
California uses 38 billion gallons of water per day. 6.6 billion gallons per day is used as cooling water for power plants. This could be reduced to 5.8 billion gallons per day with the installation of more advanced systems using water desalination as a component.
Reuse of this desalted water for human consumption supplies 5.8 billion gallons per day.
So, this subtracts off the 6.3 billion gallons per day is used as the public water supply leaving 0.5 billion gallons per day from fresh water sources.
According to the USGS
Total......... 37969
Irrigation.... 23056
Thermoelectric 6601
Public Supply. 6307
Aquaculture... 973
Industrial.... 400
Mining........ 272
Livestock..... 188
Self Supply... 172
Growing plants under glass and recycling water in these facilities radically reduces water demand for irrigation to about 20% conventional levels. So, that is reduced to 4.6 billion gallons per day when instituted. Furthermore, waste water has nutrients in it that are suitable for plants, once disease vectors are eliminated.
So, a near term program would entail;
(1) Conversion of agriculture to greenhouses
(2) Reuse of waste water as irrigation for green houses,
(3) Reuse desalted cooling water from power plants for public supply.
(4) Use of waste heat in power plants for desalination to increase supply.
(5) Use of salt water for thermoelectric cooling.
In this way 38 billion gallons per day is reduced to 2.1 billion gallons per day, providing a 33.9 billion gallon per day surplus.
Now the USDA reports 7.9 million acres in California is irrigated.
http://ers.usda.gov/topics/in-the-news/california-drought-2014-farm-and-food-impacts/california-drought-2014-farms.aspx
It costs about $1 million per acre to put irrigated land under a glass greenhouse. It costs $400,000 per acre to put land under a plastic film greenhouse. Recovery of evaporated water in a greenhouse reduces water consumption by 80%. Another $500,000 per acre installs improved water management systems.
Even with the high priced spread this is $11.9 billion to cover this acreage. It saves 18.4 billion in irrigation water - and by reuse of waste water from public sewage - use is reduced to zero.
The reduced water handling - which is energy intensive normally - is reduced. Surplus energy is redirected toward air handling and temperature control - which changes energy impact by reducing energy needs, and increasing yields. Furthermore, the spread of pollutants is reduced the need for fertilizer is reduced, and the recycling of waste radically reduces adverse environmental impact. Finally, control of insects and reduced biohazards, mean less sales of insecticide.
http://www.zeecol.com/
The $8.70 per 1,000 gallons can be allocated to the different users to pay for the system. Power plants, Public users, Farmers, Industry, each pays $2.00 per 1000 gallons - and each gets a benefit in addition to water. Farmers for example, get greenhouse and improved water management.
If we wished to fee ourselves from natural gas and nuclear power we could do so, using advanced hydrogen producing solar panels as described here;
https://vimeo.com/52213948
Now beyond this more conventional approach, it is possible to harvest water from air, according to MIT scientists;
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/innovation/this-tower-pulls-drinking-water-out-of-thin-air-180950399/
A square meter of mesh produces 3 gallons per day in California along the coast according to UC Davis USGS and Berkeley Lab study done in 2014.
Whether you love fog,
https://vimeo.com/69445362
Or hate it,
A mesh arc over a free way, 40 meters in diameter and 20 meters tall eliminates intense fog conditions like that above inside the arc while collecting 300,000 gallons per day. To collect 6.8 billion gallons of water requires 22,670 miles of sea coast highways to be covered with water collecting mesh and channels. The rain water run off would also be captured nearly doubling the amount collected. Lighting and road maintenance of affected roadways would be improved, and advertising could be sold along the roadway to defray costs.