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Comment by kitsuac | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like a non-renewable energy source which changes the natural flow of the water permanently. Isn't there bound to be negative environmental effects?

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Non-renewable? All that salt in the ocean isn't going anywhere and we'll have fresh water as long as the water cycle continues. You could even use grey water waste from fresh water that was originally desalinized for human use.

I mean, you could say solar is non-renewable because the sun die one day. After all, there is a finite supply of solar energy.

This is actually a form of solar energy anyway because it is the sun that provides the initial energy to separate the water, and move the water into the atmosphere against gravity.

Hah, great point. I guess you could take the unnecessarily further and state that all energy potential on Earth ultimately derives from the sun. We're 100% solar already!

I'd say most of the chemical energy on the surface of the planet is derived from solar power, in contrast to nuclear (fusion or fission) power.

Of course, solar is nuclear too. So we're actually 100% nuclear powered.

Not nuclear or geothermal power

We could have never developed nuclear without the sun getting us started though...

Well, no not all. Batteries (non-rechargeable) and nuclear are given energy by previous supernovae, I would assume.

> a non-renewable energy source

The sea will remain salt and as long as rivers will flow the ion potential will exist along the coastline. Are you referring to other parts of the method?

Really this is a roundabout way of harnessing the power of the Sun. In this case the energy used to liberate water vapor from the ocean.

When you think about it this way, all of our energy sources are just repackaged solar except for nuclear.

> all of our energy sources are just repackaged solar except for nuclear

And nuclear is just repackaged supernovae!

What about geothermal energy? Part of it is nuclear, but the other part is left-over heat from the formation of the planet.

I dunno, the article said that one square meter of the membrane could power 400 homes. And they believe the material can be made even more effective with a proper manfucaturing process. That would not seem to disrupt waterflow. I personally think this sounds incredibly promising.

If you use a small membrane there will be basically no way that a sufficiently large gradient between the two sides exist to produce meaningful amounts of electricity. This article is total bullshit even if the material science is nice.

> the article said that one square meter of the membrane could power 400 homes

The article was updated to correct this number, it was actually 3 instead of 400.

This doesn't sound terrible but it will have effects on the ecosystem similar to hydro at least - blocking fish migration paths, reducing river flow rate and potentially causing algae blooms, fish die-offs or water toxicity increases as sediments are disturbed in fun new ways.

All that said, it's certainly miles above either coal or natural gas.

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