• reallynotnick@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m going to be dense as I have no knowledge in this area, but can you just put it back in the ocean? I assume with sea levels rising the ocean is getting less salty so it wouldn’t be harmful as long as we spread it out/did it slowly?

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yes, but how it’s done is hard and expensive. If you just pump it into one spot you kill everything around with high salt concentrations. You can pump it far out to sea and disperse it over a large area, but that requires pipes going out to sea. The pipes would probably be made of metal, which salt water and metal don’t mix well, not to mention the brine in the pipe. You also need pumping stations along the pipe because it can’t perpetually slope down, and if it goes below sea level it needs to be pumped out.

      Basically, it’s complicated and expensive and not as easy as just dumping it into the ocean.

      • qyron
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Reprocess it for minerals harvesting, like lithium, or just evaporate it and keep the salt, which by itself is a resource for chemical industry.

          • qyron
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I made that same observation some time back and the answer I got was: money.

            Why spend the money to develop a technology to harvest a mineral from the sea with probably minimal to no impact to the environment when you can simply use already existing tech and just open a hole in the ground?