alt Hacker NewsI'm asking naively and honestly: is there a solution to brine? Believe it's pumped directly back into ocean at the moment.
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throwup238 • yesterday at 1:59 PM
Desal plants use static mixers to mix the brine with a bunch of ocean water and pump it back out. The specifics depend on the local ecology and ocean currents but it’s a matter of making the outfall pipes long enough (they’re kilometers long usually).
Brine is probably very valuable.
If we make it a slurry, perhaps we could use it to pump to unpopulated areas with endorheic lakes like the Salt Lake or Salton Sea, then mine and refine the resulting slurry.[0]
The concern is the brine getting into the atmosphere -- that can likely be mitigated.
[0] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html