Sustainable Water Solutions: Drive Innovation in Affordable Desalination Technology.
The discussion brings to light the major hurdles in making desalination more widespread: it's expensive, energy-intensive, and comes with environmental issues like brine disposal. This underscores a pressing and ongoing need for technological breakthroughs to make desalination more feasible.
There are opportunities for R&D firms, engineering companies, and cleantech startups to develop and commercialize:
- More energy-efficient desalination processes: Innovations in membrane technology, alternative separation methods (like forward osmosis and membrane distillation), and direct integration with renewable energy sources (such as solar and wind) to cut down on operational costs and carbon footprint.
- Sustainable brine management solutions: Technologies for brine valorization (extracting valuable minerals/salts), zero liquid discharge (ZLD) systems, or environmentally safer methods for brine dispersal/treatment.
- Smaller, modular, and scalable desalination units: Cost-effective, decentralized systems that can be used in smaller communities, agriculture, or industrial applications, making deployment more flexible and potentially less capital-intensive than large-scale plants.
- Hybrid systems: Combining desalination with existing water treatment or wastewater reclamation processes to improve overall efficiency and water recovery.
Marketing efforts should focus on:
- Cost-effectiveness: Emphasizing reduced lifecycle costs, lower energy consumption per unit of water, and potential revenue from brine byproducts.
- Environmental benefits: Highlighting the reduced carbon footprint, minimal ecological impact from brine, and contribution to sustainable water management.
- Water security and resilience: Positioning advanced desalination as a reliable, drought-proof solution to ensure water availability for critical needs.
- Adaptability and scalability: Showcasing the ability to tailor solutions to specific local conditions and demands.
Origin Reddit Post
r/futurology
Why aren't countries and States or Provinces in countries spending massively on desalination projects?
Posted by u/xtothewhy•06/04/2025
Focusing on ocean or sea bordering nations and places, I understand there high costs, however if water is going to be, as it already is now in many places, a massive issue, shouldn't those co
Top Comments
u/InSight89
You have to sell it to the consumer. And that can be difficult. Whilst fresh water, or lack of it, is a growing issue it's not something that is currently newsworthy. Trying to explain to the
u/CodSoggy7238
You are right on all accounts.
That's why not much is done but virtue signaling because for most people it is not their problem. Yet.
u/BAKREPITO
I'm giving a macro perspective for why desalination isnt widespread. If a place is wealthy enough and faces water scarcity, ofcourse desalination is an option. Historically, people have consi
u/BAKREPITO
There's enough freely available water in most places through rain, rivers, lales, glacial melt or aquifiers. Desalination is too expensive and energy intensive. It also produces a lot of brin
u/leleledankmemes
Global desalination capacity is approximately 100 million cubic meters per day. So many places are in fact spending quite a lot on desalination. There are major seawater desalination plants a
u/rileyoneill
Contemporary energy costs. Desalination will be more popular when there are enormous amounts of solar power on the grid (like you design the system for winter months) with nothing to do and
u/KarloReddit
The problem is scale. The biggest desalination complex in Europe is the Mediterranean Sea. It evaporates water that rains down as fresh water, yet we still have ground water problems.
So bui
u/xtothewhy
>There's enough freely available water in most places through rain, rivers, lakes, glacial melt or aquifiers.
In many places at this moment but aquifers worldwide are reducing massively a
u/NameLips
They are doing so where it is economical to do so.
If it's cheaper to dig deeper wells, they'll do that. If it's cheaper to run pipes a hundred miles to a river, they'll do that.
Israel ha
u/BhalaManushya
Feasibility. It requires quite a lot of energy and its expensive. Its just cheaper to make reservoirs and store and route water.
u/gredr
Even when water is a massive issue, desalination is usually impractical at scale.
u/EmperorOfEntropy
OP is essentially wondering why people aren’t freaking out and preparing for what is considered a looming fresh water crisis. Many experts believe some of the biggest aquifers and fresh wate
u/amurica1138
Even if desalination were more affordable - there's the whole politics angle to work out.
The places that need the water the most (in the US anyway) are largely - shocker - not on the coast,
u/TraditionalBackspace
Spending on desal comes and goes depending on how bad drought conditions are. It will be back.
u/amer415
This is the forgotten aspect by everyone thinking: “abundant energy is the key”… marine life is quite sensitive to salinity, and dumping brine back in the ocean is just very difficult at larg
u/BAKREPITO
There's enough freely available water in most places through rain, rivers, lakes, glacial melt or aquifiers. Desalination is too expensive and energy intensive. It also produces a lot of brin
u/SiOD
There is only a limited pool of money for infrastructure, even things that are needed aren't being built. Secondly they're extremely expensive to run and maintain, even the countries that hav
u/psychosisnaut
They create tons of toxic brine that has to be pumped back into the ocean and kills sealife
u/randomusername8472
OP: "why aren't countries doing this very expensive thing that might be needed in the future!?"
Countries can't even do the relatively cheap stuff that's needed and would have undeniable be
u/talligan
The good old "the solution to pollution is dilution" environmental engineering joke
u/BAKREPITO
If you have energy abundance then brine isnt an issue. You keep pumping in sea water and slowly diluting the brine until it reaches regular salinity to process out. The key is it is also ener
u/No_Maintenance9976
Most countries hit hard by droughts aren't wealthy enough to prioritize desalination and the required energy infrastructure. It's simply too energy consuming and expensive.
For most countrie
u/Unasked_for_advice
Because its a problem for tomorrow and they are getting by well enough as is , its expensive to desalinate and get rid of the waste brine safely so who is gonna pay for it? Its easy to say b
u/aguspiza
Because that is not giving politicians any new votes.
u/gredr
Even when water is a massive issue, desalination is usually impractical at scale.
u/SmamelessMe
It absolutely is a matter of cost.
Where enough people can afford to spend money on expensive water, desalination plants are built.
Where enough people cannot afford to spend money on expen
u/treemanos
They don't kill life unless made poorly, all the decent ones like in Isreal and Saudi Arabia release at carefully worked out positions during tidal outflow which distribute it without toxic e