Hacker News Reader

Where does all the waste water go? If 10 billion goes down the sewer and back to the ocean, you can "re-salt" that water on the way out..

View on HN

Even better, you can build an osmosis power station and create a lot of electricity. The energy in the salinity difference between the water of a river and the water of the ocean is enormous.

(It basically works like this: You have two containers with water of different salinities, connected with a membrane that only lets the water pass, but not the salt. The water will move through the membrane to balance the salinity - osmosis - and one container will have a rising water level, which can be used to generate electricity with turbines.)

Wouldn't it be better to simply recycle the non-salty water instead?

Depends. You only need a difference in salinity, not non-salty water. If the brine is much more saline than the ocean, there's your energy potential. On the other hand, this kind of power plant also goes well at the mouth of a river. You don't need clean water at all.

I don't know about California, is all the fresh water fully recycled until the rivers are dry? That would be hard to imagine.

I don't think the rivers would run dry if we recycled waste water, as a majority of it is just dumped into the ocean.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com