Salt, NaCl, Sodium Chloride.

[Mercedes Benzene]

I know a whlie back we talked about the salt content in seawater. Well, I was thumbing through my CRC Handbook just now, and I found a table that you might find interesting for its information on salt content.

I'm not going to quote it, but here's the source:
CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics 86th edition
14-16 "Composition of Seawater and Ionic Strength at Various Salinities (Ref. 2)

It lists the composition at various salinities (S), but I'll only list S = 30 since it's on the low end. The values are listed as grams per kilogram of seawater.

16.58

0.057

----

0.97

0.078

0.98

0.013

9.03

0.338

0.974

0.051

0.007

0.023

0.582

0.135

0.012

0.019

[Mercedes Benzene]

Hmmm.... sorry for the ugly formatting. The indent doesn't seem to be working properly.

[Michaelangelica]

No, formatting is hard.
The CRC publications are so dense.
like being hit over the head with a typewritter/data base?

You would think that harvesting the minerals in sea water and providing fresh water would be a profitable enterprise.
Especially if you linked it up to using base load power in power plants.

[Mercedes Benzene]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

No, formatting is hard.
The CRC publications are so dense.
like being hit over the head with a typewritter/data base?

You would think that harvesting the minerals in sea water and providing fresh water would be a profitable enterprise.
Especially if you linked it up to using base load power in power plants.

No. Honestly I don't think it would be profitable for anything other than NaCl. Everything else is just present in too small of quantities. That's just my opinion though, since I don't have much knowledge in the natural resources department.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by Mercedes Benzene

No. Honestly I don't think it would be profitable for anything other than NaCl. Everything else is just present in too small of quantities. That's just my opinion though, since I don't have much knowledge in the natural resources department.

you are probably right.
But what if you were dealing with massive gigolitres of water?
what if you improved recovery technology rather than just removing salt?

Have you seen this?

I

live on the Central Coast of NSW surrounded by power stations that use salt water to cool the plants.
I have often wondered (with 16% water in the dam) why the power stations can't also desalinate water

I talked to a Guy at a recent conference who worked for a big power Station up north.
I ran the "de-sal at power plant" idea by him and he thought it was a good idea.
Power Stations, as you know, need to keep a base load going.
At night, he said, they need to gradually "step down" their massive generators. CO2 wise, this is not very efficient use of the energy produced by burning the coal. A lot of energy is wasted gradually stepping down the massive generators over a period of hours.
Sometimes they need to expend a lot of energy going to get an extra power station on line to cope with peak demand.
He also said that seawater used for cooling is warmed to 50C anyway, so it is not a lot more to get to 101C.
I suppose it is a matter of economics, perhaps of perception, perhaps of conservative thinking; but the Professor's new technology (below) looks good.
What do you think?

Professor Discovers Better Way To Desalinate Water

Science Daily — Chemical engineer Kamalesh Sirkar, PhD, a distinguished professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and an expert in membrane separation technology, is leading a team of researchers to develop a breakthrough method to desalinate water. Sirkar, who holds more than 20 patents in the field of membrane separation, said that using his technology, engineers will be able to recover water from brines with the highest salt concentrations. The Bureau of Reclamation in the Department of Interior is funding the project.

Kamalesh K. Sirkar, PhD, is a distinguished professor of chemical engineering and the sponsored chair for membrane separations and the director for the Center for Membrane Technologies at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

"Our process will work especially well with brines holding salt concentrations above 5.5 percent," Sirkar said. Currently, 5.5 percent is the highest percentage of salt in brine that can be treated using reverse osmosis.

"We especially like our new process because we can fuel it with low grade, inexpensive waste heat," Sirkar said. "Cheap heat costs less, but can heat brine efficiently."

ScienceDaily: Professor Discovers Better Way To Desalinate Water

Professor Discovers Better Way To Desalinate Water
On desalination and putting back the salt
Desalination - Ask a Real Expert - Ask an expert - The Lab - Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Gateway to Science

Desalination - Ask an expert - The Lab - Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Gateway to Science

[goku]

i don't understand how sea salt has lower sodium than regular salt?

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by goku

i don't understand how sea salt has lower sodium than regular salt?

My guess would be that most sea salt is in crystals and so probably contains more water by volume than regular table salt.
(?)

[freeztar]

I'm going to guess that it has to do with the fact that iodine is added to table salt, in the form of sodium iodide.

[Monomer]

More on desalination...

Australia is now paying more attention to desalination and the number of desalination plants in Australia is increasing. There are however a number of drawbacks, including:

• high costs
• high energy consumption
• the generation of large volumes of hyper-saline brine which is often discharged to the sea.

CSIRO is searching for alternative energy sources to run these plants and developing methods to avoid discharging the hyper-saline waters into the sea.

CSIRO’s research and development work focuses on:

• developing clever membrane technologies to improve the efficiency of desalination
• identifying major industrial waste heat sources and developing symbiotic technologies to recover heat and electricity needed for the desalination plants
• extracting mineral salts and extra water from the hyper-saline discharge waters.

Potentially salt may be extracted from the hyper-saline brine left after desalination. This could significantly reduce the area of land required for salt evaporation pans.

Hyper-saline waters can be converted into higher value products such as:

• caustic soda – for the alumina industry
• sodium cyanide – for the gold industry
• sodium hypochlorite – bleach
• polyvinyl chloride – PVC
• titanium tetrachloride – for titanium pigment and titanium metal production
• hydrochloric acid – a common minerals acid widely used by all industries.

Bitterns – the liquid remaining after the salt has been removed from the sea water – can also be converted into valuable products for use in:

• waste water and sewage treatment
• scrubbing sulfur dioxide and sulfur trioxide
• making light-weight flame retardant panels and boards
• Epsom salt production for horticulture
• refractory bricks for industrial furnaces
• magnesium metal production.

Bitterns also contain valuable potassium, bromine and lithium salts.

Desalination with zero sea discharge (Profile - Project)

[goku]

planet earth is an excellet water desalinater.