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Comment by wuschel | Hacker News Reader

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wuschel·

* Problem 1: It gets into the ground water.

* Problem 2: If dumped into the ocean, it increases the salt concentration (see: Middle East).

Disclaimer: Worked on some related projects on how to find a positive use for Brine.

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Leakage into ground water would certainly be and issue if proper planning was not in place. I would have to think there are ways to prevent this leakage though. We have burying lots of coal ash for many years now and must have some best practices in place. Coal ash is more toxic than salt.

What about molten sodium energy storage?

We looked very briefly into energy storage and resource production (mining).

The scale is the problem. At the end, you still end up with lots and lots of inorganic material, which is toxic for the environment.

The amount of salt used in storage applications would likely not even make a dent in the amount of salt produced by large scale desalination.

Did you arrive at any possible positive uses for Brine?

I wish we had. No, our team failed to come up with anything that would mitigate the hazardous effects of brine. The scale of brine production is enormous. While there are inefficiencies in the supply chain (energy carrier for reverse osmosis, membrane quality and technologies), we closed the project with the insight we are actively deploying another technology that messes up our planet.

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