Scientists discovery how to make coral grow 40 times faster

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

And IIRC they are a net benefit as far as costs, or an improvement to current methods.

[clearspira]

At the risk of sounding cynical and a bit paranoid, I'd say that a status quo where water is a highly limited resource that you can't acquire from the sea benefits those in power with the price-gouging and pay-or-die systems it allows.

I've read much on the attempts to build Star Wars style moisture evaporators (they're not called that but they work on the same principles), and every couple of years there seems to be a breakthrough only for all news on it to vanish. I think moisture farmers would be to some corporations what electric cars are to the oil barons.

[Riedquat]

I've wondered if power plants with clean turbines could double as desalination plants. If they have to boil water and condense steam anyway... I imagine current power plants probably aren't clean enough for potable water, but maybe new plants in drought-prone areas could be built for double purpose.

They'd probably have to be designed from scratch to make use of salt water. Not exactly a modern application so the problems might be easier to solve (and the scale's different) but some railways had to have water softening plants because using hard water (not even sea water) would scale up the boilers as well as cause other problems.

[Darth Wedgius]

I've wondered if power plants with clean turbines could double as desalination plants. If they have to boil water and condense steam anyway... I imagine current power plants probably aren't clean enough for potable water, but maybe new plants in drought-prone areas could be built for double purpose.

They'd probably have to be designed from scratch to make use of salt water. Not exactly a modern application so the problems might be easier to solve (and the scale's different) but some railways had to have water softening plants because using hard water (not even sea water) would scale up the boilers as well as cause other problems.

Looks like people more knowledgeable than me agree with you.

I was thinking sea water was being used for the turbines, but it's just used for cooling, with very pure water used for the turbines themselves. I guess at best this could be used to pre-heat sea water before boiling it, and the membrane approach used at the Carlsbad plant is probably more energy efficient already.

Oh well, best laid plans of gnats and nerds and all that.

[J!!]

At the risk of sounding cynical and a bit paranoid, I'd say that a status quo where water is a highly limited resource that you can't acquire from the sea benefits those in power with the price-gouging and pay-or-die systems it allows.

I've read much on the attempts to build Star Wars style moisture evaporators (they're not called that but they work on the same principles), and every couple of years there seems to be a breakthrough only for all news on it to vanish. I think moisture farmers would be to some corporations what electric cars are to the oil barons.

that's one of those things that someone claims to have invented periodically, with said claims generally being dubious at best. i actually came across a video just this week examining one such (see below). the fundamental problem with the whole concept is that any area which might need such a thing is not going to have any appreciable amount of water in the air to extract. e.g. even if someone were to invent a working moisture de-vaporator, it would only be useful in places where it is unusable, and only be usable in places where it is useless.


youtu.be/LVsqIjAeeXw

[LittleRaven]

I've read much on the attempts to build Star Wars style moisture evaporators (they're not called that but they work on the same principles), and every couple of years there seems to be a breakthrough only for all news on it to vanish.

Star Wars physics always makes for fun conversations.

J!!'s video does an excellent job of describing why Moisture Vaporators can't really work on Earth. Tech isn't the real problem - physics is. There's just not enough water in the air to justify any real effort at trying to get it out of the air.

But Star Wars has free energy - which changes the equation substantially. Sure, your return on investment for a moisture vaporator will be pathetically low, but if you investment is also pathetically low, maybe the math works out. Take the basic concept of the WaterSeer but have it use powered fans and real refrigeration and it will work, but of course you have to feed it power. In our universe, that makes it impractical - you'll never get enough water out of it to justify the power you put in, but in Star Wars they have portable fusion generators (or something) that run practically forever so that's not really an issue. Of course, they also have giant spaceships that are quite capable of hopping around the universe, and the universe is chock full of hydrogen and oxygen, so it seems like just getting water from somewhere else would be the easier route.

[Riedquat]

I was thinking sea water was being used for the turbines, but it's just used for cooling, with very pure water used for the turbines themselves. I guess at best this could be used to pre-heat sea water before boiling it, and the membrane approach used at the Carlsbad plant is probably more energy efficient already.

Oh well, best laid plans of gnats and nerds and all that.

Using the separate cooling water might be a good approach though. Seems a bit of a waste seeing all those clouds of steam coming out of cooling towers, it would be good if some use could be made of it. Perhaps you've already extracted most of the energy you meaningfully can from the steam, if you could get more from it it would be better used to make the plant more efficient.