In the nations that you mentioned, their problems go far beyond water shortage, infrastructure in general is in disarray in those countries. Solve that problem and then pipelines and desellination plants might be up for discussion.
Is this idea impossible????
- Thread starter Deathfromabove
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Well i meant countries affected by drought in general. But you are totally right, countries like Chad and Sudan have a lot more problems than drought to deal with.
Much of the fighting is because of water.
You're just digging your irrational hole even deeper.
No one said anything about boiling (until you foolishly did just now!) and that certainly isn't needed for water to evaporate and simply vanish into air with very low humidity - which is what they have there.So you would come out ahead by stopping now rather than going deeper still. You've already made several blunders with that idea, don't compound it even farther.
So how exactly does any water get in the air then Read-Only? I mean your kind of suggesting that there is no planetary 'convection' system that causes evaporation, which in turn kind of suggests that your understanding comes across as we don't get little white fluffy clouds, but legless sheep imposters floating up high in the sky.
Seriously though, Evaporation is caused by convection in regards to a water body, the moisture released by evaporation isn't in such a low quantity that it automatically gets converted to it's base atomic elements but would slowly generate a higher pressure. The times of day this is even more noticeable would be Dawn and Dusk, when temperatures are either only just starting to rise or slowly lessening. Such periods usually generate fog banks and mists.
I see this all the time where I'm situated in the world, admittedly though it's not a hot place but it is a peninsular and contains a number of Rivers and man made waterways.
Water doesn't just 'Vanish' into thin air, it either has to undergo a conversion process or it remain a molecule. The mentioning of 'Boiling water' was just to ascertain that such evaporation doesn't cause moisture to just disappear, even if the temperature could get up to 100°C
Seriously though, Evaporation is caused by convection in regards to a water body, the moisture released by evaporation isn't in such a low quantity that it automatically gets converted to it's base atomic elements but would slowly generate a higher pressure. The times of day this is even more noticeable would be Dawn and Dusk, when temperatures are either only just starting to rise or slowly lessening. Such periods usually generate fog banks and mists.
I see this all the time where I'm situated in the world, admittedly though it's not a hot place but it is a peninsular and contains a number of Rivers and man made waterways.
Water doesn't just 'Vanish' into thin air, it either has to undergo a conversion process or it remain a molecule. The mentioning of 'Boiling water' was just to ascertain that such evaporation doesn't cause moisture to just disappear, even if the temperature could get up to 100°C
You are STILL digging, Stryder! Amazing!
Water even evaporates when the air temperature is WAY below freezing - in that case it's actually called sublimation. It evaporates because of a little thing called "vapor pressure" and NEVER, NEVER breaks down into "it's base atomic elements" under natural conditions. The water molecules remain intact and simply change phase from a liquid to a gas (water vapor).
Water evaporates all over our planet wherever it's present. As I explained to you earlier, it will completely vanish from sight in an area of low humidity (your example of fog forming requires an area with HIGH humidity! and temps falling below the dew point.) Neither of which you can cause to occur in the places under discussion here.
Clouds can and do form anywhere there is sufficient moisture present in the air AND at heights where the temps are low enough for the water vapor to condense out on nucleating particles in the air. And clouds can and do pass over the part of the world under discussion. But they were formed elsewhere and cannot produce rain there because the prevailing low humidity causes any falling droplets to simply evaporate before ever reaching the surface. That's also a common occurrence in many other parts of the world until enough has fallen to raise the ambient humidity. People in the Midwest U.S. and other places have that experience fairly regularly.
So just how deep to you intend to make the hole you're sinking into? :shrug:
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
We have political problems with water right here in America. We live in the extreme northwestern corner of California, where there is a water surplus. In some areas the land can't be built on because the water table is too high. Three rivers flow into the Pacific within a fifty-mile coastline, and they dump a bazillion gallons of freshwater into the sea every day.
A ship can anchor there with a huge sack and simply capture the water. Since ocean currents run clockwise in the northern hemisphere, the ship could tow the sack down to Los Angeles with very little expenditure of fuel. This ultra low-technology has been tested and is quite feasible.
Our municipal governments would find some way to charge a fee for this, but if it was as little as a thousand dollars day it would probably cover the operating expenses of one of the small cities' police departments, and the thirsty Angeleños could still buy the water for a lot less than they're paying to pump it over the mountains in the California Aqueduct. The ship owners would make a fortune and everybody would come out ahead. Right?
Sure. The water companies in southern California have a sweet deal going on and they don't want anybody to ruin it. If somebody starts competing with their outrageously priced water (we never had a lawn anywhere we lived down there because even on our income it would be too expensive to water it) they'll lose business and their profits will decrease.
So nobody can get "permission" from the state government to launch this project! Meanwhile all that water pours into the ocean every day.
Take the water from the ocean and transfer to the desert and then used the sand from the desert to filter it naturally.
It take some thinking to come up with the design though.
The holes for the underground water container would need to be large enough for water to get through but still too small for the sand.
It take some thinking to come up with the design though.
The holes for the underground water container would need to be large enough for water to get through but still too small for the sand.
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Back up a little, Kipply. It's impossible to use sand to filter out dissolved salts.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
So just exactly how much does it cost to desalinate sea water, on an industrial scale?
It costs the same as building and operating a power plant, plus whatever it costs to maintain and staff the desalinization equipment. A big factor that prevents a lot of desalinization projects is not so much the cost per se, but the fact that you have to build a power plant (which is probably going to be coal or gas fired) on or near beachfront property.
elsyarango
Registered Member
i think its a great idea.
You think what is a great idea? And why?
Sure seems like critical thinking is in short supply. I wish folks would rev up the rational engine a bit before posting. You don't need to be a scientist to comprehend that ideas like pumping salt water into a desert lake to evaporate and "seed" the atmosphere is totally unrealistic.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
This subject has been brought up before. There is an invention called a "water cone" that is basically a personal solar still made of plastic. It can make one liter of pure water per day from just about any source, from sea water to raw sewage.
It could be manufactured profitably in China or anywhere for less than $5 a unit. Somebody like Bill Gates could donate one to literally everyone on earth who needs it without making a big dent in his fortune.
Unfortunately he'll have the same problem we all do. Anyone who's ever run a charity drive knows what I'm talking about. You can't actually get your food, clothes, schoolbooks, medicine, tools, or whatever, to the people in the Third World. Their corrupt leaders intercept it, sell it on the black market, and use the money either to amuse themselves or to make war on the corrupt leader in the neighboring country.
It could be manufactured profitably in China or anywhere for less than $5 a unit. Somebody like Bill Gates could donate one to literally everyone on earth who needs it without making a big dent in his fortune.
Unfortunately he'll have the same problem we all do. Anyone who's ever run a charity drive knows what I'm talking about. You can't actually get your food, clothes, schoolbooks, medicine, tools, or whatever, to the people in the Third World. Their corrupt leaders intercept it, sell it on the black market, and use the money either to amuse themselves or to make war on the corrupt leader in the neighboring country.
Glad to see a post from you. I was worried you had cashed in you chips, but see your are OK and your old self still.
Seems to me we could solve both problems easy. Just get those surplus kids to your back yard where all those coffee cans are burried. As only one has your cash in it (most have high explosives) that takes care of many kids and the lucky one who lives you can kill with your 45. Then you pay for the pipe or go to jail.
kmguru
Staff member
"Chad's principal mineral resource is natron (a complex sodium carbonate), which is dug up in the Lake Chad and Borkou areas and is used as salt and in the preparation of soap and medicines. Annual production is a few thousand tons. There are indications of deposits of gold in the Ouaddaï area, uranium in the Ennedi Plateau area, uranium and wolframite in the Aozou Strip in the far north, and bauxite near Laï. Oil has been found north of Lake Chad." - EB
So, may be they can afford to desalinate salt water...
So, may be they can afford to desalinate salt water...
...yet
I have been wondering why they do not do just that for some time now.
Pipe it from the ocean to someplace below sea level.
Inside the pipes there will be hydroelectric turbines.
The power generated by these turbines will convert the salt water to chlorinated water via electrolysis.
The water is desalinated and chorinated along it's travels and comes out ready for the tap.
Seems very simple to me, which, admittedly, probably means it won't work.
Please tell me why it won't work, if you don't mind.
It will work. In fact there is a great below sea level depression near the Med sea in the Sahara desert. More than 40 years ago I read a study of using it as you suggest to generate electric power. It was economicall feasible back then and certainly is now, but the capital investment is large and not much of a market is readily available. The lack of political stability was also a deterent to actually doing it.
That depresion is so large and deep that a good hydramic head is available for many centuries as the brine lake will expand to make a large surface which soon stablizes in altitude well below sea level, just becoming salter for at least a 1000 years if 10 megawatt power plant is continuosuly operating (not sure these were the values of the study), but a very big power plant can run for more than 1000 years (It will need rebuilding about 40 or 50 times before the lake fills with undisolved salt.)
( Much of this thread is so silly that I did not bother to tell this until your post.)
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Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
That is probably the best cure for any kind of poverty. It's been persuasivly argued that the single greatest factor in a person's likelihood to live in poverty is where he was born. The corollary of that is that the easiest way to lift him out of poverty is to move him to a country with a higher per-capita GDP. It would follow logically from this that to prevent him from making that move is a form of discrimination against the poor. Or, where conditions justify the word: racism.
That is a moderately old post; this thread has been necromanced. Max is in fact no longer with us. I have no idea whose decision it was. I always regarded him as the Devil's Advocate and felt that he was simply reminding us that the attitudes he pretended to support are out there and we need to deal with them. But many other people thought he was just a big jerk.
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