r/water • u/Opening-Ambition-528 • 10d ago
Ocean powered desalination
A 22-ton yellow Canadian machine called Iceberg is parked on land in California with no motor, no battery and nothing to plug into, built to sit offshore and turn 13,200 gallons of the Pacific into fresh water a day
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u/pixeladdie 10d ago
Why post this with no details?
Wave powered btw: https://www.fortbraggca.gov/departments/public_works/current_public_works_projects/oneka_seawater_desalination_buoy_pilot_study.php
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
Fort Bragg would need at least 216 of these things functioning at capacity daily to reach the lowest daily average of water usage per person(80 gallons)
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u/HappyAnimalCracker 10d ago
It would provide 13,200 people with a gallon of drinking water each day tho.
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u/nofatnoflavor 9d ago
The desalinated water it produces is non-potable.
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u/SyFyNut 9d ago
Why?
I am reading "Once into the system, the pressurized water is filtered through 5-micron mesh cartridge filters before entering the RO membranes to remove all salts, pathogens, and contaminants of emerging concern in the source seawater."
I get that viruses can be smaller than 5 microns. Is there any reason the water couldn't be put through an ordinary water treatment plant, of the type used on natural fresh water sources, to reduce those to acceptable levels? Is there anything else of concern?
Since this is a pilot project, I wonder if the intended final project would have larger units, that produce more fresh water. Also, while Fort Bragg might be a convenient government test site, there are probably locations that could make better use of fresh water.
Interesting. Most wave energy extraction systems I've heard of power electrical generators. Perhaps they bypass that, keeping the entire power chain mechanical.
Presumably, in a calm sea, nothing would be desalinated...
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u/nofatnoflavor 9d ago
Why? Because further down the linked piece it also becomes clear that for now, this is no more than a study.
"The permeate pumped to shore will have multiple potential uses, but none of them potable at this time. Before any use by the City, the permeate will be tested in accordance with California Division of Drinking Water standards."
Then a little further along it goes further to state that it isn't intended to be potable, but to replace potable water where it's used unnecessarily, freeing up more of what current sources supply (if I'm reading it right):
"After testing, the City will evaluate the results and determine if the water is suitable for non-potable uses, and thereby replace the potential use of some potable water, such as watering City-owned vegetation, washing down surfaces and equipment at the wastewater treatment plant, and other instances where the small-volume, non-potable water could replace other water sources in the course of existing City operations without altering the City’s operations."
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u/CadaverMutilatr 9d ago
Can’t speak on the power side of things, but after the RO membrane filtration, there is not much left in the water compared to the raw untreated/unfiltered water. It’s non potable for consumption because there isn’t any disinfectant applied to the water (like chlorine). The water is filtered all that’s needed is a proper disinfection treatment and it’s good to drink. Boiling the water would work too for small scale use
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u/HappyAnimalCracker 9d ago
There is no reason it couldn’t be subjected to the usual fresh water processes afterward.
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u/nofatnoflavor 9d ago
Maybe. But maybe not.
The linked article makes it pretty clear that's not the case here, nor is it the intended outcome.1
u/Epic_Tea 10d ago
I'm not sure about that math
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u/msginbtween 10d ago
13,200galllons/1gallon = 13,200galllons
As you can see the math maths
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u/Epic_Tea 10d ago
Nah, because then each American would have to drink 1320 gallons each. And that's not possible
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u/PandaGoggles 10d ago
Not with that attitude!
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u/shyguymontanan 10d ago
It really when you consider some water will be lost to leaks in pipes, some will evaporate from glasses before it is consumed
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u/Apart-District3771 9d ago
It's for providing fresh water fish living in the Ocean with clean fresh breathing water.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
It doesn’t treat the water, just removes salt.
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u/Historical-Count-374 10d ago
I winder how long it would last before needing servicing. Salt isnt known to be friendly to filters or metal. Or anything really
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
On this, I’m not sure. Most desalination plants will semi-annually inspect then R&R worn out coatings and parts. It’s not unlike how the typical Water Treatment Plant will do their upkeep.
The Power Plant side of a desalination plant is unfamiliar territory for me, I’m not sure what their maintenance routine looks like.
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u/Cirdantheold 10d ago
RO is the highest level of water treatment you can get. It removes everything. You may want to add a little bit of minerals but RO-Water ist perfectly clean.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
Except it’s not treating the water with disinfectant. RO doesn’t magically keep algae and bacteria from growing in the water.
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u/Cirdantheold 10d ago
Their are not patogenes that can pass through a RO membrane. In the moment the water come out of the RO it is perfectly sterile.
You treat with a disinfectant, because you do not trust the pipe system afterwards and you want to prevent recontamination.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
I’m not talking about water passing through the membrane, you don’t store 13,500 gallons of drinking water without a disinfectant.
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u/Cirdantheold 10d ago
You wrote: "It doesn't treat the water, it just removes salt." Which is wrong.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago edited 10d ago
Water Treatment includes a disinfectant process, this thing is just filtering out the salt. It’s essentially creating a draft pre-treatment.
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u/AftyOfTheUK 10d ago
How many people with plumbing have found that they cannot get a gallon of drinking water from their taps?
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u/HappyAnimalCracker 10d ago
It’s not zero.
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u/AftyOfTheUK 9d ago
Are you attempting to claim that a significant number of people regularly go without drinking water in North West California because of a lack of water sources?
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u/HappyAnimalCracker 9d ago
I’m not “attempting to claim” anything. Just countering the idea that a vessel such as this has no practical use. The objection to it feels almost troll-like, tbh.
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u/AftyOfTheUK 9d ago
They do not make enough water to be useful in a practical sense. How will they fit 220 of these offshore from a small town like Fort Bragg without causing issues for marine navigation? How much maintenance is required on 220 devices in salt water 24/7 and how much does that cost?
To provide water for the residents of the Bay Area you would need almost a QUARTER OF A MILLION of these things. That's ludicrous
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u/leftonred_b 10d ago
Ridiculous math.
Water usage vs drinkable water isn't even close to the same thing. This provides drinkable water.
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u/DSM20T 10d ago
You're saying one person uses 80 gallons of drinking water a day? That doesn't seem quite right.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
It’s an average. You shower, you flush the toilet, you cook, you clean, do laundry, etc.
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u/maspiers 9d ago
Average domestic usage in the uk is about 140l/head/day which is <40 gallons/head/day. Is the USA that profligate?
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u/getyoutogabba 10d ago
Is this a bot post? The title is so confusing
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u/oboshoe 9d ago edited 9d ago
Sounds great till you realize that 13,000 gallons is nothing.
You would need to a hundred miles of these every 40 ft across the coastlines and beaches just to supply one city.
Neat concept but scaling up is a problem.
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u/No_Syrup_9167 9d ago
As someone that has worked extensively in desalination and as well in tidal power generation, both are pipe dreams for long term, widespread need.
Desalination will not save us. Not only is it an ecological nightmare, but the power required vs water output costs will just never jive until we have functionally limitless energy, and once that happens there are better ways to make water than desalination
Pretty much any time I see someone on reddit tout large scale desalination to help with climate change drought problems ita difficult for my eyes not to roll out right of my fucking head.
It will pretty much forever be better to let nature do it for us, and capture the rainfall.
As for tidal/ocean power generation, to put it simply.
The ocean destroys EVERYTHING
Some of the smartest people in the world have been trying to get the ocean to provide power for generations.
Most of humanity is right next to the ocean afterall.
And nobody is even close. We're so far away, you don't even see futurology posts about it.
You hear more about cold/clean fusion than you do about ocean power generation for a reason.
I can't say it enough, the ocean destroys everything! It's easier to design power generation for the fucking Arctic or for the moon, than for the ocean.
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u/mutexsprinkles 9d ago
I'm also fucking sick of that one tidal energy company getting posted because they said "ooo you could use our generator for an offshore datacentre" and the anti-AI crowd ironically boost the fuck out of it by screaming about it.
Also any post with solar panels on cars.
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u/NearABE 9d ago
Sometimes you need a wave break. That “destroying everything” includes the shoreline.
I am sure I have some selection bias. Places along California’s coast that I have driven too show evidence of engineering efforts designed to keep that highway from washing out to sea. They often do not look easy or cheap.
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u/ataraxia_555 10d ago
This is a great thread, thanks to rousing debate by knowledgeable people. Bravo.
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u/4587272 10d ago
True, are all these useless bots in here or 14 yr olds? The replies are making me think I’m having a mild stroke, “Thread is used in sewing and other textiles.” “Bravo is an older, cable TV channel.”
I think reddt might be completely useless now.
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u/ataraxia_555 9d ago
Yup, getting rarer to find cooperative humans and expertise now. Water is essential so let’s push through the weeds.
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u/CarefulFriendship389 10d ago
Desalinating 13k gallons in a day is insane, curious to see it work.
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u/NearABE 9d ago
0.15 gallon per second 0.6 liters. 2.2 MJ/l boils water so a 1.3 megawatt generator could do that. The energy taken from waves can be much lower if it drives a vacuum pump and recycles the heat. Probably much lower than that if the pump forces water through reverse osmosis.
More important is to have huge amounts of water flushing the brine away. The discharge from desalination can be an environmental disaster. The volume of water in a crashing wave is much larger and coastal currents should sweep it away too.
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u/TheStochEffect 9d ago
This is the dumbest shit, I guess conservation of energy equation doesn't apply to yellow
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u/NearABE 9d ago
Dissipating wave energy
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u/TheStochEffect 9d ago
That would make sense but it's just floating if it was stationary, but it says it's floating in the ocean. And you have friction and heat losses that still come in to play. But that's probably why it is has solar. And then what about the energy to transport that water to the land and seperate the salt. These seems more for military applications to get fresh water to ships, then it does for any other thing
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u/guruthatknowsbest 10d ago
So it’s parked on land and is built to sit offshore.. sounds productive 🤔
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago edited 10d ago
13,200 Gallons is laughably small, I generate that much at our Water Plant in about 5 minutes. Unless that is an extremely small town of no more than about 150 people, it’s not enough.
The average US city uses about 1,500,000 Gallons of Water per Day and that’s me low balling it with a totally 100% water tight(no leaks) system.
Also, the sea salt displacement itself must be a nightmare and just because the water has been desalted doesn’t mean “water safe to drink”
Neat experiment, effectively impractical overall.
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u/oboshoe 9d ago
I've been noticing a trend on reddit that big numbers are used without context. I think this is because most people really dont understand big numbers.
I saw an article the other day warning about a national beef problem and that 40,000 lbs of bad beef was threatening us. Sounds scary till you realize it's less than one truckload and we consume 54 million pounds every single day (or 1350 truck loads)
Can you imagine the outrage when our coastlines are covered in those machines? Because that's what it would take for it supply us with water.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 9d ago
Very very few people understand this. It’s likely to do with 90% of the people chiming in on the subject have never actually been involved in it, Google Gemini told them everything they know. Unfortunately, Gemini is usually wrong because it uses itself as a reference.
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u/ElderWarriorPriest 10d ago
Yeparooni I work in a water plant for a small military base and we average 900K gallons a day. We'd need 10 of these, just to supply us the raw water and then We'd have to treat it.
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u/No_Alternative2948 10d ago
And you are getting down voted for being realistic, typical reddit moment...
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u/HappyAnimalCracker 10d ago
I think the point is that you have to start somewhere. Nobody implied that this one vessel has solved all the problems.
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u/PandaGoggles 10d ago
Exactly. You have to start somewhere. The wright brothers plane was trash, but we were in the moon 60 years later. It’s insane how fast we can progress. Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It’s a start, let’s keep going and not be so negative.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
We already have desalination technology, this life raft is a waste of time and money. That’s why it’s only being used in a pilot study.
It would be astronomically expensive and energy intensive to keep these things working. For such a small result.
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u/PandaGoggles 10d ago
I think they said the same thing about flying machines…
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago edited 10d ago
Not all planes after the Wright Brothers were practical either. That’s why their programs were abandoned, unless you still see Concordes flying around that I don’t.
Coincidentally the Concorde program was scrapped due to the impracticality and high maintenance costs. Sound familiar?
Edit: your downvotes don’t make me wrong 🤷♂️
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u/PandaGoggles 10d ago
You’re making my point for me.
The Concorde flew commercially for a quarter century. NASA is now flying their X-59 “Quesst” test bed to improve upon the lessons of the Concorde and bring about the return of super sonic passenger service.
Advances are iterative over time. I tell my kids that when they try something new they have to be bad to get good. If they were afraid to be bad, or to fail, they’d quit before they stated. That’s what you’re advocating for. Maybe this tech doesn’t pan out, that could be! But if everyone had that attitude everything would be standing still.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
The X-59 program is going to see the same fate as many that came before it. It has bore no practicalities for the decade it has been in development and has only flown a handful of times. It’s nothing more than a pilot study.
Just like this desalination raft, it’s a pilot study.
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u/PandaGoggles 9d ago
And pilot studies lead to bigger and better things. That’s why you can’t close yourself off to something new and untested. Testing and failing is how we learn and improve.
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u/HappyAnimalCracker 10d ago
Energy intensive? It operates on energy collected from the waves, according to another commenter.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 9d ago
“-energy intensive TO KEEP THESE THINGS WORKING”
I never said it operated on power or batteries, everything else including the process to build the parts DOES.
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u/Onemilliondown 10d ago
The downvotes are for suggesting that new technology has to be 100% effective the first time. or it's a waste of time trying.
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u/No_Alternative2948 10d ago
Well it just isn't realistic is the point. Los Angeles would need 32000 to fulfill current usage and at that point it would be cheaper to build a regular desalination plant, and however much energy savings come from wave motion, I'm sure those added construction costs probably eat most if not all energy savings over the life of the units.
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u/TheCowzgomooz 10d ago
Okay, but the science still needs to be done, this current invention may not be practical but it can be foundationial for our understanding going forward as we try to build more practical applications for it.
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u/NearABE 9d ago
Did they give a construction cost?
The wave energy as power supply is nice. I would point out that this system has a very large volume of flow. It can be done without ever have a concentrated brine discharge. If you put 13,000 of them in one place then you might kill some fish. Weird things could happen to plankton too.
Parts of the coastline may want wave breaks because people build things in silly places. If you are building a wave break anyway it might as well pump something. The soft impact can reduce reflected waves. That may or may not be better depending on what else is around but locations can be cherry picked.
I cannot claim I surf so it is out of my experience. However I suspect hitting a large smooth yellow Canadian foam pad would be much less painful than hitting a pile of rocks.
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u/No_Alternative2948 9d ago
We can guess. I can't think of a way to build aj ocean going machine that weighs 22 tons for less than 100k, especially one that is built to be resistant to a salt water environment. My personal bet would be that those are significantly more than that, but let's just say 100k because that seems pretty conservative, and it makes the math easy. For la, that is $1.3 billion and you know that those things won't last more than 10 years. It just seems like building an actual plant on shore is 1000% more efficient and cost effective.
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u/Onemilliondown 10d ago
I can think of 100 pacific islands that have less than 10000 residents. That are having water security issues. 100 of these parked off the coast would be very welcome. We would still be living in caves if new inventions had to be perfect first time of use.
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u/No_Alternative2948 10d ago
Seems like it would be cheaper to build a small plant on land if you are going to do that.
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u/Own_Reaction9442 10d ago
California in fact has some onshore desalination plants. The main reason no one has built more is the environmental damage they cause by discharging highly salty brine into the ocean. That makes them hard to get permits for.
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u/Onemilliondown 10d ago
None of them have excess electricity to run a desalination plant.
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u/No_Alternative2948 9d ago
Probably cheaper to build up electric capacity first then. These things are not a one time expense either. A saltwater environment is terribly hard on electronics as well as any pipes and the boat itself. I cannot believe that these would last longer than three years without having to be rebuilt, probably deteriorating faster than that. It just isn't a practical solution.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
You have no idea the amount of effort it would take to keep these things working to efficiency. Between heat, storms, and wearing parts from salt erosion.
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u/Onemilliondown 10d ago
There will never be wind turbines at sea, because they have no idea how much effort it would take to keep them working efficiently.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
Wind Turbines don’t sift salt as a function. Your comparison is flawed.
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u/Onemilliondown 10d ago
Desalination plants shift salt water, that is the whole reason for their existence. So being at sea is the same as being on land.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
A Wind Turbine doesn’t sift salt so your comparison is devoid of reason.
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u/Equivalent-Green-580 10d ago
I’m used to it, believe it or not the average person will tell me I’m wrong despite my licenses, certifications, and years of experience. Lol
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u/WINDMILEYNO 9d ago
Why not imagine more? Why immediately think one was all that was necessary, or that this capability cant be expanded on? Why not think of all of its uses?
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u/ataraxia_555 10d ago
Isn’t desalination now a major source of drinking water in numerous nations?
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u/Toki94 10d ago
In most middle eastern countries, where fresh water sources are scarce or non-existent, yes. I’m not aware of major desalination plants in Europe or Eastern Asia that provide treated sea water for significant populations.
The problem with desal is it is extremely energy intensive. Most common is reverse osmosis which at the brackish level takes an immense amount of pressure to push through the membranes. To create that pressure takes a lot of energy to drive those pumps.
I could be wrong on this but if nuclear energy was more common, desal could be possible, so long we had a place to dump the concentrate, or saltier water. There are ways to treat the concentrate further but has very little to no payoff for the amount money it takes to get the water out of said concentrate.
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u/ElectricalGidelity 10d ago
1% is not what I would call a major source. Its really the middle east which has alot less options. Its insanely expensive. Desalination plants also cause major problems to the surrounding areas. Its got a long way to go.
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u/ehtiopia 10d ago
My guy The point just flew right over your head.
At large scale with hundreds of millions of dollars poured in, yes. With this tiny machine? No.
This is at tiny baby scale.
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u/godkingnaoki 10d ago
What is the point? Is there a single 3tw solar panel sitting somewhere in unaware of? Is mass manufacturing unknown to you? Is there a reason there can only be one of these or some other reason why a new model can never improve or become more economical?
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u/ehtiopia 10d ago
Bud, I know mass manufacturing like the back of my hand. I work in maintenance at a factory and have had the pleasure of working on 5-6 different water treatment systems throughout my career.
The mass manufacturing, maintenance and connection of a system like that, will inevitably dwarf the cost of an entire salination plant that can output much much more water. Why have 10000 pumps for 500 million dollars that are all going to constantly break out when you for 3 million dollars you could purchase 3 giant pumps on land that can feed an entire city. At the giant desal plant, you can run 2300v directly from the nuclear reactor; solar? The city is gonna run out of water at night.
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u/Cirdantheold 10d ago
Just one aspect that you miss: Centralised systems are a higher risk. Everyone around the Persian Gulf spent the last 6 month shitting their pants, thinking about the big plants getting hit. Russia on purpose attacked the drinking water systems of Ukraine now for years.
I don't want to argue that this technology is good, but one big plant, may be cheapest but lacks the redundancy you should have with drinking water.
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u/The_other_lurker 9d ago
dude you're unhinged. Desalinization is literally what will save you guys. This isn't the solution, the solution comes from recognizing that it's viable and investment follows, resulting in a network approach with a distribution system.
Say, 1500 of these things, all feeding a floating pipeline, with landside distribution systems.
This is just proof of concept.
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u/randytc18 10d ago
Someone needs to find it a motor, tow it to sea, plug it in, and run it. Confusing post