Reply To: Direct conversion

[zapkitty]

JimmyT wrote: I read an interesting scheme for desalinating water a few years back which might play well with this technology. Rather than using distillation it uses fractional crystallization.

Basically you pump seawater up to the high Sierras during the winter and spray the water on the mountain slopes.

… hmmm… it seems that the cost of pipelines and pumping and spraying and recollecting the water would have to be greater than simply desalinating the water by the seaside and pumping fresh water to wherever it is needed. The free temperature difference offered by natural cooling would be more than offset by the added costs of manipulating the water to try to take advantage of the cooling.

The vicious circle again… the only reason someone would look into such a idea is the cost of energy. Make the cost of energy a non-issue and the idea becomes a non-issue.

And as climate change impacts the Sierras (and it will) the water shortages brought on by the decreasing snowpacks will be mitigated by the availability of fresh water from the seaside… and if it gets so bad that the Sierra ecology itself can’t take it any more then pump up [em]fresh[/em] water from the seaside and spray it on the slopes…

Aneutronic fusion would change a lot of perspectives.

JimmyT wrote: Relatively fresh water crystallizes as ice or snow and concentrated brine drains away (back to the ocean presumably).

As co-opted and as cowed as the Sierra Club has become I’d think even they would object to brining the Foothills vineyards 🙂