chuck@dartvax.UUCP (Chuck Simmons) (03/09/85)
As, far as I know, this question has nothing to do with space. But I don't know where else to turn. A couple of us were sitting around shooting the breeze, and started talking about how one would go about extracting water from seawater. Basically, I claimed that since one did not hear about large plants turning seawater into water and making deserts into oases, that it was either technolgically infeasible, or it simply cost too much money to build a plant large enough to produce the river of water that would be needed. The person I was arguing with claimed that building such a plant would be real easy and proceeded to describe a still to me. So I thought I would bring some of my questions to the newsgroup which had been discussing light sails with such clarity and enthusiasm. Here are some questions: How much water would one want to extract from the ocean on a daily basis to irrigate some reasonably large tract of land? How much fresh water could be produced on a daily basis by setting up an evaporation tank a few acres in size and then putting some sort of glass or plastic roof above the tank on which the water could condense? What kinds of problems do folk run into when they try to build desalinization plants? What sorts of designs are used in building desalinization plants? Thanks for any comments you may send my way via either Mail or this newsgroup. And if you feel the subject is more appropriate for some other newsgroup, by all means, switch newsgroups. Or, just to give these querys some justification for being on this newsgroup, we could suppose we are trying to build a desalinization plant on the 4th planet out from Alpha Centauri which is known to be 99% covered by ocean. Also, feel free to mention schemes such as towing icebergs from one of the poles to an African or Californian port (or whatever the Alpha Centauri IV equivalents are). chuck_simmons%d1@dartvax