(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Water solution [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2022-08-24
Offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, by Chad Teer from Coquitlam, France - Flickr.com - image description page, CC BY 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=341183
A few years ago, I wrote a tongue in cheek blog post about adapting to climate change. I included solutions that I thought were ridiculous—vastly more difficult and expensive than actually cutting carbon emissions.
In retrospect, maybe my ideas weren’t so far fetched—or reality has become more so.
One of my suggestions was solar-powered desalination and long pipelines to replenish reservoirs and headwaters. Hear me out:
Desalination uses a lot of power. The Carlsbad plant in San Diego uses an average of 35 megawatts. It produces about 50 million gallons of fresh water per day. About 1.5 gallons per watt per day—not too terrible. However those numbers are only possible when the plants operate on a massive scale.
Modern solar panels produce on average about 150 watts per square meter. Some back of the envelope calculations says you’d need about 233,333 square meters of solar panels to produce 35 megawatts. To keep the math simple and provide a margin of error, let’s say 250,000 square meters. That’s a square 500 meters on a side.
My proposal is simple:
Float a stable grid of disused offshore oil platforms to support the desalination plant and enough solar panels to generate the power needed for it.
Offshore oil platforms are remarkably stable in terrible weather. Look at the platforms in the North Sea. Link 36 platforms together, 100 meters apart to form a 500-meter by 500meter grid, and then mount a superstructure above the grid to hold the solar panels. Mount the desalination plant below the panels. Run the pipelines up to the headwaters of every major river system in the US. Have branch pipelines adding water to reservoirs along the length of each river. This will keep the water levels stable.
Before you say it can’t be done, look at the pipeline system and pumps in the Hetch Hetchy water system in California. Shade each pipeline under a continuous roof of solar panels. This will provide the power for pumping. It will also keep the pipelines from heating up in the sun. Make the pipes capable of running both ways! When flooding is imminent, the pipes can help drain excess water out of the reservoirs. Sell a large percentage of the salt removed from the water into global salt markets, but store several tons on site for resalination of the fresh water running back downstream when we’re preventing floods.
Is this a particularly wild idea? Absolutely. However, it’s completely doable with the technology and materials on hand today. And it’s a lot less crazy than some of the solutions being floated, like orbital mirrors to block solar gain. It’s still far sillier than cutting carbon emissions, but sadly this is more likely to happen.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/24/2118581/-Water-solution
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
