
Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem - systemfreund
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-08/saudi-thirst-for-water-is-seen-creating-a-toxic-brine-problem
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AmericanOP
Saudi Arabia had water before their stint as a wheat exporter. You can
literally see them drain their country's aquifier into agribusiness:

[https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=sa&commodity...](https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=sa&commodity=wheat&graph=production)

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Tsubasachan
Man that ground water took thousands of years to build up and they are
draining it in decades. Kinda like oil lol.

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anitil
From what I understand the the same could be said of the Californian aquifers

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hughdbrown
> Saudi Arabia’s desalination plants produce about 31.5 million cubic meters
> of contaminated water each day. That volume of liquid, most of which is
> pumped back into the ocean, is equivalent to about 20 million barrels of oil
> a day, or, double the amount of crude it currently produces

I don't understand the math.

31.5e6 cubic meters * 1e3 liters/cubic meter = 31.5e9 liters

31.5e9 liters / 3.78 liters/gallon = 8333333333 gallons

8333333333 gallons / 42 gallons/barrel = 198412698 barrels

So it looks like this calculation is off by a factor of 10. Did I miss
something?

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Johnny555
I don't understand the equivalence to oil at all -- are they saying that one
barrel of this contaminated water has the same environmental impact of dumping
a barrel of oil in the water?

I don't really understand the relevance of equating water waste to exports, if
it were a nation known for pork exports, would they put the water volume in
terms of hogs?

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paulcole
It's an analogy. The average person knows Saudi Arabia exports a LOT of oil.
This is 2x a LOT. So a WHOLE LOT.

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Johnny555
I dunno if that's a good analogy if the desire is to make it sound huge. If
it's a small enough quantity that it can be shipped by tankers (even huge
super tankers), that doesn't sound like a lot compared to the size of the
ocean.

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paulcole
The average person doesn't know how much a tanker holds.

They know Saudi Arabia = Oil.

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apo
The article isn't clear where the metals are coming from. It could be that the
desalination process simply concentrates what's already in the seawater.

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tfha
They add copper as part of the purification process

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apo
What's the source? The article says nothing about it, and seawater contains
copper and other metal ions all by itself:

[https://web.stanford.edu/group/Urchin/mineral.html](https://web.stanford.edu/group/Urchin/mineral.html)

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sp332
Why would they chlorinate the water before desalination? And where does the
copper come from?

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systemfreund
Apparently it's for prevention of fouling:

> Combined low concentrations of copper (5 μg/l and chlorine (50,μg/l have
> been effective in preventing both micro and macro-fouling in over 120
> seawater installations since 1987.

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242186534_FOULING_P...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242186534_FOULING_PREVENTION_IN_DESALINATION_PLANTS1)

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TheBill
It's also done in freshwater (great lakes) to prevent zebra mussels from
clogging the intake pipes. Things like to grow where other things bring food
by for free, and are sheltered from predators.

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TheBill
IMO the right direction is not conventional treatment, but as Swebs said,
either create new salt flats, or use it as feedstock for algae or other single
cell organisms that can be converted to feed, or biofuel.

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unchocked
I'm under the impression that this is just concentrated seawater?

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tfha
With added copper

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blunte
Imagine what the extraterrestrial anthropologists will say about humans
someday...

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hyperbovine
"They took a garden and turned it into a parking lot."

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orangeeater
"If this is paradise I wish I had a lawnmower"

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ricardobeat
Unless they are adding chemicals to the water before desalination (which I
don't see mentioned anywhere), that sounds like the 'brine' is just ~1.5x
concentrated seawater, which will get diluted back again? What am I missing?

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dsfyu404ed
Even if it's just extra salty it's still a local problem. You can't just dump
it all in the ocean because it would still kill everything. You'd need to dump
it out slowly or over a much wider area for the concentration not to be
harmful. It's like a polluted river killing everything where it dumps out even
if the amount of pollution is inconsequential overall.

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swebs
How about dumping it into a shallow pit and letting the water evaporate,
creating new salt flats.

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ryanmercer
>Saudi Arabia emits 31.5 million cubic meters of liquid effluent a day

You'd need some massive pits and you'd have to displace way more than 31.5
million cubic meters of soil as it isn't all going to evaporate in a day.
Ideally you'd want really shallow pools so you'd eat up an insane surface
area.

For some reference an Olympic sized swimming pool is about 2,500 cubic meters
so you'd need 12,600 (pools) just to hold one day worth of the contaminated
water.

For a fun little compassion (that amuses me and might someone else) it is
estimated that all of the silver ever mined adds up to about 166,375 cubic
meters Source: [https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-much-silver-has-been-found-
wor...](https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-much-silver-has-been-found-world?qt-
news_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products)

And only about 8000 cubic meters of gold has been mined. Source:
[https://www.jmbullion.com/investing-guide/james/gold-
supply/](https://www.jmbullion.com/investing-guide/james/gold-supply/)

Edit: derpity-derp-derp fix

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itcmcgrath
A cube 55 meters on a side, not 55 cubic meters. That's a huge difference:
166K+ cubic meters

