Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Welcome everyone to Forward Thinking. My name is
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I am your host extraordinaire, joined by my
Speaker 1: co hosts extraordinaire Joe McCormick and Lauren Vocalbon. And today
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk a little bit about H two
Speaker 1: O and UH and how we get salt out of
Speaker 1: salt water? And well why are we even talking about
Speaker 1: this show? Well, around the world, water scarcity is actually
Speaker 1: a big problem. Now. There's lots of water on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: I mean the surface of the Earth, it's covered in water,
Speaker 1: but about more than of that water is saltwater. We
Speaker 1: can't use it. We can't drink it, we can't use
Speaker 1: it for agriculture, we can't use it in cooking. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just not very useful to us. Um and in
Speaker 1: fact um in two thousand seven, the World Health Organization
Speaker 1: estimated that forty percent of the people on Earth are
Speaker 1: affected by water scarcity. Right, And so if there were
Speaker 1: some way to use that salt water, that could go
Speaker 1: a long way to alleviating some of that water scarcity issue. Right.
Speaker 1: And the water scarcity manifest in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways, it's just that people can't
Speaker 1: get clean drinking water, and that's obviously one of the
Speaker 1: biggest things, and it's useful for sanitation and all these
Speaker 1: things too, but it's also crucial in getting the food
Speaker 1: we need. I mean, I think the figure is that, um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Speaker 1: Nations UH, seventy percent of the water worldwide is used
Speaker 1: in agriculture of the consumptive water use. So not only
Speaker 1: are we having a water scarcity issue, but this could
Speaker 1: also be a food scarcity issue. I mean, when you've
Speaker 1: got so much of your water tied up in the
Speaker 1: production of food sources, then it makes it doubly important
Speaker 1: to get that access to fresh water. And then on
Speaker 1: top of that, uh, you know, water scarcity is is
Speaker 1: not just regionalized, but it also can be dictated by circumstance.
Speaker 1: For example, UH, after a a natural disaster like like
Speaker 1: a massive hurricane hits an area, that can mean that
Speaker 1: there is a at least temporary shortage of of access
Speaker 1: to clean water. So this is a one of those
Speaker 1: problems that is persistent in some areas and sort of
Speaker 1: an acute problem in other areas in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: some sort of of natural disaster or catastrophe. Um. And
Speaker 1: as a result, it's a good idea to try and
Speaker 1: find ways of of addressing this, including desalination right which
Speaker 1: people are working on. The industry has grown about fifteen
Speaker 1: percent a year recently. They're currently sixteen thousand plants operating today.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's it's the the entire things expanded something
Speaker 1: like two d and seventy six percent since two thousand one.
Speaker 1: And it's a and encourage number. I mean, the problem
Speaker 1: is that desalination is uh, it's well, I guess, to
Speaker 1: use a terrible metaphor, it's a drop in the bucket.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean there's the water scarcity issues can
Speaker 1: can be offset somewhat by desalination, but it's hard to
Speaker 1: really address the problem head on completely with it. However,
Speaker 1: before we get into the drawbacks or the the other
Speaker 1: the you know, the enormity of the problem, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a good time to actually talk about how we go
Speaker 1: about removing salt from salt water. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: a practice that is you know, it's it's centuries old. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the simplest one, the one you've already thought of.
Speaker 1: Is you boil it. Yeah, yeah, the the simple distillation process.
Speaker 1: Or actually, you don't even have to boil it. You
Speaker 1: can just leave it out in the sun and reproduce
Speaker 1: the natural process of evaporation that creates the water cycle
Speaker 1: on Earth. So as long as you have something to
Speaker 1: catch it, yeah, you just let let it evaporate and
Speaker 1: then it'll drip down into a Yeah. Here, here's a
Speaker 1: fun science experiment for you to try at home. You
Speaker 1: get a bowl of saltwater and you get an empty glass.
Speaker 1: You put the empty glass into the bowl of saltwater.
Speaker 1: You cover the whole thing up with some plastic wrap,
Speaker 1: maybe poke a hole in there, put it out in
Speaker 1: the sun for several hours. You're going to have the
Speaker 1: water evaporate from the bowl of saltwater. Uh, and it
Speaker 1: will end up condensing on the plastic wrap and dripping
Speaker 1: down into the glass. So the water you get in
Speaker 1: the glass is drinkable. Everyone should do it. By the way,
Speaker 1: you should not drink the saltwater, because your cells, in
Speaker 1: an effort to dilute the massive amount of minerals that
Speaker 1: are coming into your system, will start to UH to
Speaker 1: push water out of the cells. And this is a
Speaker 1: bad thing. In fact, it can eventually result in kidney
Speaker 1: failure and uh, then you can have something called death,
Speaker 1: which is what we generally like to avoid. Why you
Speaker 1: don't drink saltwater. So we've been boiling water to boiling
Speaker 1: saltwater to get the fresh water out of it for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years, but recently we've gotten some much more
Speaker 1: advanced techniques of this. Right, it's better than distillation. It's
Speaker 1: it's boiling two point oh. It's a procedure called multi
Speaker 1: stage flash where they they have different chambers of very
Speaker 1: rapid heating that that violently boils the water and then
Speaker 1: reapplies steam to the chambers of new water to uh
Speaker 1: to create a rapid and efficient boiling process. Right. Right,
Speaker 1: so you've got uh, you're you're boiling the water multiple
Speaker 1: times in order to get as much fresh water out
Speaker 1: of that saltwater as possible. You're left with fresh water
Speaker 1: in one container and a very salty brine in the other,
Speaker 1: which is good for marinating pork chops. Actually it's not
Speaker 1: good for much of anything. That's one of the the
Speaker 1: issues about desalination. But again, I guess we can we
Speaker 1: can wait till we get to the end of the
Speaker 1: whole discussion there. So, yeah, I mean that's that's a
Speaker 1: very uh popular method of getting fresh water out of saltwater.
Speaker 1: But then there's also the use of reverse osmosis. How
Speaker 1: does how does that work? Because I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: osmosis is the basic thing which says that when you've
Speaker 1: got a membrane between between two liquid solutions, one with
Speaker 1: more stuff in it and the other with less stuff,
Speaker 1: the solutions want to even each other out. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's essentially what osmosis is. Well, yeah, but so you
Speaker 1: get a you get a semi permeable membrane, meaning that
Speaker 1: it's going to allow some things to go through, but
Speaker 1: it's going to restrict other things. Yeah, And upon one
Speaker 1: side of that membrane you put salt water and then
Speaker 1: you use pressure to push the saltwater through the membrane,
Speaker 1: and then fresh water comes to the membrane. The salt
Speaker 1: is restricted. It's essentially filtered out by this membrane. You
Speaker 1: have to use lots of lots of pumps to do this.
Speaker 1: Actually uses quite a bit of energy. It uses less
Speaker 1: than boiling the water does, but yeah, it's still it's
Speaker 1: still energy hungry, so you are pumping water, essentially pushing
Speaker 1: the fresh water through this membrane and retaining the salt. Also, uh,
Speaker 1: the water that you get on the other side of
Speaker 1: the membrane may not be um perfectly salt free. You know,
Speaker 1: some salt particles can get through, depending upon the type
Speaker 1: of membrane you're using. Uh. And also there are other
Speaker 1: issues with this, but it's it's um a way to
Speaker 1: process a lot of water in a relatively short amount
Speaker 1: of time. So it's uh, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: desalination plants that use this approach to It does also
Speaker 1: mean that you've got a lot of moving parts, so
Speaker 1: things like the pumps or even the membranes themselves have
Speaker 1: to be maintained and replaced on a regular basis. So
Speaker 1: there's an ongoing cost of manufacturing and maintaining these pieces
Speaker 1: in order to keep the the plant in working order.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's another method. There's a method that's essentially
Speaker 1: uses gravity. Now this is a very small scale desalination technique.
Speaker 1: It's you know, the when you're talking about a desalination plant,
Speaker 1: you're talking about on the level of millions of gallons
Speaker 1: of water. But for the gravity method, it's really more
Speaker 1: for something like a community, you know, you think of
Speaker 1: a small community, not like a major city. And UH
Speaker 1: essentially is a series of filters that are vertically stacked,
Speaker 1: and you pour the salt water at the top and
Speaker 1: gravity pulls it downward and as it passes through the filters,
Speaker 1: it filters filter out all the salt until you get
Speaker 1: fresh water at the bottom. So it's like using the
Speaker 1: potential energy of gravity in place of the pumps you'd
Speaker 1: use in a reverse house moss plant. Right. And again
Speaker 1: it's a much smaller scale. We're not you know, we're
Speaker 1: not talking about something that's gonna be producing millions of
Speaker 1: gallons of fresh water. Right. Well, some of these plants
Speaker 1: are pretty impressive. That I was reading about the Carl's
Speaker 1: Bad desalination project and that that's um a plant that's
Speaker 1: under construction now in the San Diego area. UM and
Speaker 1: San Diego is one of these places that's that's good
Speaker 1: for a desalination project because it's dry, but it's on
Speaker 1: the coast, so it has access to water, but not
Speaker 1: as much fresh water. UM and this plant, what they're
Speaker 1: claiming is that they will be able to supply fifty
Speaker 1: million gallons per day that's fresh water. That would that
Speaker 1: would be an enormous offset. Obviously, that would be fantastic.
Speaker 1: And of course there are other communities that have even
Speaker 1: or you know, even large cities that have even less
Speaker 1: access to fresh water than someplace like San Diego does.
Speaker 1: A lot of places in the Middle East use desalination. Sure,
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, I think is currently the largest producer of
Speaker 1: desalination plants. Also, what's interesting to me is that culturally,
Speaker 1: in some of these areas, especially in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: desalinated water is thought of as being inferior to water
Speaker 1: that was just fresh to begin with. Like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: there's actually a cultural perception that the water tastes UH
Speaker 1: differently and that it has h an unhealthy effect on one.
Speaker 1: UH tests have not borne that out, but the perception
Speaker 1: is there. And of course if the perception is there,
Speaker 1: that can really you know, that can really shape people's
Speaker 1: behavior and adoption of these sort of technology. So some
Speaker 1: of the some of the obstacles to desalination are culturally based,
Speaker 1: not even technologically based. So we've looked at these couple
Speaker 1: of techniques UM and so they can both be very
Speaker 1: effective for producing water in a dry area that borders
Speaker 1: the ocean, but they're still pretty energy hungry. Reverse osmosis
Speaker 1: is better, but can we do any better than this? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. That is the question of the day.
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah. I mean, if you've got these methods
Speaker 1: of removing salt from salt water to get fresh water,
Speaker 1: but they require huge amounts of energy. Really you're talking
Speaker 1: about an energy problem, not just a water problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: where where does this energy come from? And that's a
Speaker 1: big question to ask. I mean it's it seems, you know,
Speaker 1: simple on the face of it, but when you really
Speaker 1: start to think about it, if you have to burn
Speaker 1: fossil fuels in order to generate fresh water, really your
Speaker 1: problems are kind of shifting. You know. It's even if
Speaker 1: you get enough fresh water, you are still having the
Speaker 1: problem of having to depend upon fossil fuels. You also
Speaker 1: have the problem of pollution. So how do you get
Speaker 1: around that. One method might be to try and harness
Speaker 1: solar power to generate the energy needed to run these
Speaker 1: desalination plants. Um that would be a very clean way,
Speaker 1: relatively speaking. I mean you have to take in the
Speaker 1: account what it what it takes to build a solar panel.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there and and there's rare earth minerals and
Speaker 1: things of that nature that you have taken. Everything is
Speaker 1: a big picture when you ultimately look at it. But
Speaker 1: but the generation of the power itself would be clean
Speaker 1: using solar energy. Uh. The only issue there really is
Speaker 1: being able to generate enough solar energy to provide what
Speaker 1: is necessary for running a plant. Luckily, I guess you
Speaker 1: could say for a lot of these areas where a
Speaker 1: desalination plant is is most needed, they also tend to
Speaker 1: get a lot of sunlight, So you could if you
Speaker 1: were able to build an efficient enough solar panel and
Speaker 1: then build a rays of these solar panels entire solar farms,
Speaker 1: you could generate the energy needed to run a desalination plant,
Speaker 1: which in turn would generate the fresh water you need.
Speaker 1: You still have to find a way to dispose of
Speaker 1: the brine in a way that's that's uh responsible, because
Speaker 1: the brine itself is very dense. It's got a lot
Speaker 1: of salt content. Remember, I mean, that's where all that
Speaker 1: salt was before. You know, when you got all the
Speaker 1: saltwater exactly most of the time it ends up is
Speaker 1: runoff in a freshwater river. Which of course is not
Speaker 1: good for the natural wildlife. Yeah, and you're talking about
Speaker 1: even if you just dumped millions of gallons back in
Speaker 1: the ocean, that can't be good for the local wildlife
Speaker 1: because because this stuff sinks down and then it immediately
Speaker 1: starts to uh to really impact the oxygen producing elements
Speaker 1: in the ocean. So you start to really make a
Speaker 1: severe impact on the local area and uh and of
Speaker 1: course that ends up being kind of a domino effect
Speaker 1: and you get this whole uh Ian Malcolm chaos theory
Speaker 1: problem that ultimately results in dinosaurs eating somebody. But of
Speaker 1: course he would say that life uh finds. But sorry,
Speaker 1: go ahead. Well, I wanted to ask another question. Why
Speaker 1: can't we just manufacture water? Now? Think about it here.
Speaker 1: Water is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. Yes, we
Speaker 1: know exactly what's in it and how to make it.
Speaker 1: And these are some of the most abundant elements in
Speaker 1: the universe. So why is it that we can't just
Speaker 1: make water? Well, we could, I mean we would need
Speaker 1: a lot of energy. Yeah. Well, also, Joe, we need
Speaker 1: we need to get that that hydrogen. That's the problems.
Speaker 1: See hydrogen hydrogen, Yes, extremely plentiful in fact, the most
Speaker 1: plentiful element in all of the universe. However, or at
Speaker 1: least our galaxy. However, hydrogen on Earth does not really
Speaker 1: have It doesn't doesn't really occur unbonded very free. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a little bit of free hydrogen on Earth,
Speaker 1: but really, you know, percentage wise, it's a very small amount.
Speaker 1: Most of hydrogen on Earth is bonded to something else,
Speaker 1: and in order to get at that hydrogen, you have
Speaker 1: to expend energy to free the hydrogen from whatever it
Speaker 1: is it's bonded to. For example, um salt water, I
Speaker 1: mean ocean water. There, You've got lots of hydrogen. You know,
Speaker 1: I've got all that hydrogen right there in the ocean.
Speaker 1: That's really probably the biggest and most accessible, uh source
Speaker 1: of hydrogen that I can think of. So I guess
Speaker 1: if you ran electricity through ocean water, we just need
Speaker 1: to process this ocean water somehow. If only there were
Speaker 1: a a to process ocean water so that you pull
Speaker 1: the hydrogen out and the oxen out and then combined
Speaker 1: it to make fresh water. I mean, you could just
Speaker 1: boil the stuff, that's what you could do. But I mean,
Speaker 1: why not run electricity through it? So that you could
Speaker 1: use electrolysis to free that button. Yeah. No, that's the
Speaker 1: problem is that you go right back to that energy
Speaker 1: issue is without a source of hydrogen, you really can't
Speaker 1: manufacture water in any way that makes sense. There's just
Speaker 1: especially when when there are other ways of getting at
Speaker 1: the water that are less energy intensive than you're playing
Speaker 1: a losing game. So that's why there are there are
Speaker 1: new new processes that are coming out. One of the
Speaker 1: newer ones is called an ion concentration polarization. And this
Speaker 1: this basically just a runs an ion current through a
Speaker 1: nonporous membrane, and salt and larger particles like bacteria and viruses,
Speaker 1: stuff that you don't really want your water anyway, are
Speaker 1: are pushed away from the membrane and clean water flows
Speaker 1: through it. Wow, that sounds so like Star Wars E
Speaker 1: the wait, the membrane repels it and any any kind
Speaker 1: of charged anything, it's going to deflect right away from
Speaker 1: the membrane, and so so the brian kind of goes
Speaker 1: up away and the and the fresh water flows directly
Speaker 1: through it. Um and this a keeps the membrane clean,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to get at all dirty and
Speaker 1: gunky and clean it or replace it all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: And and I bet those and the other plants get
Speaker 1: pretty grimy. Yeah, oh yeah, I'm sure. Uh and and yeah,
Speaker 1: and it unfortunately only really works on a very small scale. Again,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a personal community kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They're using in a lot of rescue operations. I think
Speaker 1: during Katrina they hurt some ground units for something. And
Speaker 1: and this sort of stuff is great for those those
Speaker 1: acute problems we were talking about. For a persistent issue
Speaker 1: where you have to deliver a significant amount of fresh
Speaker 1: water to a large population on a continual basis, obviously
Speaker 1: that would not be the ideal solution. Uh. The good
Speaker 1: news is that there are a lot of companies working
Speaker 1: on this. Like like you said, Lauren, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is an industry that has grown, you know, considerably over
Speaker 1: the last several years. And uh and I've I've personally
Speaker 1: spoken with an engineer over at a General Electric that
Speaker 1: was all about designing desalination plants and finding new ways
Speaker 1: to make the more efficient so that it is less
Speaker 1: of an energy investment to uh, to to create fresh
Speaker 1: water from saltwater. And this is a problem that's not
Speaker 1: going to go away anytime soon. I mean, obviously this
Speaker 1: is something that we're going to have to really concentrate on, uh,
Speaker 1: in order to support our communities. Uh. Some of us,
Speaker 1: you know, are very fortunate that we live in places
Speaker 1: where access to fresh water isn't such a an issue.
Speaker 1: But uh, for other people, I mean, this is this
Speaker 1: is a fact of life. It's just an ongoing thing
Speaker 1: that they're going that they have to solve. So I'm
Speaker 1: really optimistic about the future in general, and I think
Speaker 1: technology is going to play a large role in making
Speaker 1: in howlping us get access to fresh water. But Joe,
Speaker 1: I think you would agree with me that technology is
Speaker 1: only going to play one part and that i'll significantly
Speaker 1: large part of this is going to have to require
Speaker 1: some some behavioral changes. Oh right, I mean you cannot.
Speaker 1: As far as we know that, there's no quick, easy
Speaker 1: technological solution to this. Like we said, we've got this
Speaker 1: energy barrier. There's always a huge amount of energy that
Speaker 1: you would need in order to get fresh, clean water
Speaker 1: to the people who need it. And so one of
Speaker 1: the easiest solutions, one of the most viable solutions, is
Speaker 1: just to use less, conserve better, and and manage more efficiently. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit outrageous that we hear in America
Speaker 1: use fresh water fresh drinking water in our toilets and
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing is just incredibly wasteful and
Speaker 1: there's no really good infrastructure way to get around that
Speaker 1: right now. But yeah, it is one of those things
Speaker 1: where during the whole design process us for it, I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone was thinking, hey, you know, maybe we
Speaker 1: should find some way of using gray water in order
Speaker 1: in these systems, in order to conserve the fresh water,
Speaker 1: because it's just, you know, why worry about it. You've
Speaker 1: got plenty of access to freshwater all the times everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it's definitely one of those things that we
Speaker 1: have to think about. And uh and Joe, you know,
Speaker 1: in in the video episode of Forward Thinking, I think
Speaker 1: you you really nailed it. You said changes are coming,
Speaker 1: and they have to because without them, we're going to really,
Speaker 1: especially depending on on where in the world we live,
Speaker 1: we're going to be facing some really tough, tough problems
Speaker 1: in the in the foreseeable future. So you know, we
Speaker 1: we have to take responsibility and accountability and make these
Speaker 1: changes so that, uh, so that future generations don't suffer
Speaker 1: for it. Thank you for agreeing with the point that
Speaker 1: you made the video series. I appreciate that. Joe. I
Speaker 1: was afraid you were going to leave me out there.
Speaker 1: I was like, He's like, you know, changed changed my mind.
Speaker 1: Turn on all the faucets please, Okay, okay, Well, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that we got that out all the way. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: remember Forward Thinking it's a video series. We've got it
Speaker 1: launched and going and it's it's fantastic. I could not
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