Hacker News Reader

Comment by arkensaw | Hacker News Reader

Desalination is cheap though. It's just never really been needed at scale in the UK because of rainfall. Maybe it's time to reassess

View on HN

Desalination is energy expensive, and results in a pretty nasty waste. Removing the salt loses the benefit of lower temperatures.

Desalination is expensive

I’ve always thought desalination would make a nice shiftable load to incentivize renewable build-out.

Not really. https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/how-much-energy-do...

Ok, its maybe more expensive than I realised according to that source, but I would argue that comparing it to something like charging EVs or running a fridge is not a fair comparison. If you desalinate 1000 litres of water it's not the same as a household using 1000 litres of water. Not exactly. Once water is in a municipal system it's cleaned and reused many many times. Desalination could overcome water shortages by topping up water in a system, in times of drought, rather than just waiting for rain.

Hm, the only reuse of municipal water I know is using treated sewer water for watering plants. I don't think any US cities recycle water back into a potable water system -- have you heard of that happening anywhere?

(I don't remember how this relates to the original argument)

Edit: oh if you meant "data center" by "municipal" then I guess! I thought you meant city drinking water

Ok I had heard of it happening in the UK but now I can't find any evidence of such, apart from a just approved scheme to treat wastewater and pump it into the Thames upstream, which is then used to source drinking water in London. So in a way, its going to happen in London, even if it hadn't already been, as I had believed.

But I would hope datacentres could use recycled or desalinated water for cooling rather than using drinking water.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com