the.com/desalination
Un-mixing the ocean, one expensive gallon at a time.
means The process of stripping salt and minerals from seawater or brackish water to make it drinkable or usable, typically through distillation or forcing water through fine membranes under pressure.
from A straightforward 20th-century compound: the prefix 'de-' ('removal of') bolted onto 'salination' (the process of salting), which itself traces back to Latin 'sal,' meaning salt. No myth here — just engineers naming exactly what they were trying to undo, as the word itself only became common once industrial-scale desalting plants made the process worth talking about.
- energy cost
- takes roughly ten times more energy than treating freshwater
- leftover problem
- produces toxic brine dumped back into the sea
- global reliance
- israel gets most of its drinking water this way
- ancient origin
- aristotle described boiling seawater for fresh water in 320 bc