In USSR giant desalinization station was biuld on the beach of Caspian sea. Some time ago, when water from Dnepr was shut down by Ukraine there was project to build two stations in Crimea, but now they seem to be unneeded, since water supply was restored.
The problem with desalinisation stations is that you need a lot of heat energy. You could build some heater fueled with whatever fuel, or build some thing that have a lot of excess heat as byproduct. Like powerstation - it will produce its main product - electricity, as usual and provide heat to desalinization station.
So, to build desalinization station you have to build powerstation. In USSR every big project was directed by government, so there was no problems with such multiindustry projects. Also, nobody wished to make money on selling water to people, it was social thing (now it is social thing too, people in Russia really pay only for maintenance of tap systems, not for water itself). And there was a trick - every power plant need a cooling system. Here we often use centralized heating system of nearby town as a cooling system for power station. In the same way USSR desalination station was a cooling system for nuclear plant.
As far a I understand in western economic system is impossible to make desalinisation station profitable. It is also impossible to return any investments. You will burn fuel in complex plant and that water will be the only thing to sell. Also, taking in mind USSR way no powerplant owner will spend money on upgrading his plant with desalinisation "cooler", and those who want water do not see any sense to build unneded powerplant.
if we look at places like California that have dev billion dollar projects that are nothing but wasting energy, again, its counter intuitive.
Desalinization plant is not something fashionable, innovative, green and woke. :)
Really such very basic for existence things should be something like roads - built and maintained for tax money and free to use for people. That is what state should be necessary for.
Meanwhile in places like California it could be possible to buld completely self-sufficient home solar desalinization systems. At least they could provide drinking water and table salt enough to supply family. But it definitely will not be enough for gardening.
How I would have been built it living in place like Califonia: Make a big parabolic mirror from any material covered by aluminium foil, put it on motorized antenna mount to track the Sun, in the focal point of parabolic mirror put a stainless steel boiler, send steam from boiler to distiller and to relatively small steam engine (may be made from largest availabe model kit) that is coupled with pump for pumping sea water and alternator to power tracking and controlling electronics.
Your need 0.6kWh to boil out 1 liter of sea water (and so get 1 liter of distilled water). Sun gives 1kW per square meter. Say, mirror-boiler efficiency is 60%. So, with a 1 square meter mirror ( ~1.1m diameter ) you will have 1 liter of distilled water per hour, or ~10 liters per sunny day. Seems enough for cooking and drinking needs of small family. Part could be stored as reserve. Output is proportional to the square of mirror diameter, but it could be a challenge to make a tracker for large mirror with boiler.
Unfortunately gardening need tons of water, so solar desalination is not an option - you will quickly run out of land setting mirrors for solar desalinator.
In USSR giant desalinization station was biuld on the beach of Caspian sea. Some time ago, when water from Dnepr was shut down by Ukraine there was project to build two stations in Crimea, but now they seem to be unneeded, since water supply was restored.
The problem with desalinisation stations is that you need a lot of heat energy. You could build some heater fueled with whatever fuel, or build some thing that have a lot of excess heat as byproduct. Like powerstation - it will produce its main product - electricity, as usual and provide heat to desalinization station.
So, to build desalinization station you have to build powerstation. In USSR every big project was directed by government, so there was no problems with such multiindustry projects. Also, nobody wished to make money on selling water to people, it was social thing (now it is social thing too, people in Russia really pay only for maintenance of tap systems, not for water itself). And there was a trick - every power plant need a cooling system. Here we often use centralized heating system of nearby town as a cooling system for power station. In the same way USSR desalination station was a cooling system for nuclear plant.
As far a I understand in western economic system is impossible to make desalinisation station profitable. It is also impossible to return any investments. You will burn fuel in complex plant and that water will be the only thing to sell. Also, taking in mind USSR way no powerplant owner will spend money on upgrading his plant with desalinisation "cooler", and those who want water do not see any sense to build unneded powerplant.
Desalinization plant is not something fashionable, innovative, green and woke. :)
Really such very basic for existence things should be something like roads - built and maintained for tax money and free to use for people. That is what state should be necessary for.
Meanwhile in places like California it could be possible to buld completely self-sufficient home solar desalinization systems. At least they could provide drinking water and table salt enough to supply family. But it definitely will not be enough for gardening.
How I would have been built it living in place like Califonia: Make a big parabolic mirror from any material covered by aluminium foil, put it on motorized antenna mount to track the Sun, in the focal point of parabolic mirror put a stainless steel boiler, send steam from boiler to distiller and to relatively small steam engine (may be made from largest availabe model kit) that is coupled with pump for pumping sea water and alternator to power tracking and controlling electronics.
Your need 0.6kWh to boil out 1 liter of sea water (and so get 1 liter of distilled water). Sun gives 1kW per square meter. Say, mirror-boiler efficiency is 60%. So, with a 1 square meter mirror ( ~1.1m diameter ) you will have 1 liter of distilled water per hour, or ~10 liters per sunny day. Seems enough for cooking and drinking needs of small family. Part could be stored as reserve. Output is proportional to the square of mirror diameter, but it could be a challenge to make a tracker for large mirror with boiler.
Unfortunately gardening need tons of water, so solar desalination is not an option - you will quickly run out of land setting mirrors for solar desalinator.
Desalinization is a thing, but it's difficult and extremely expensive at this time as well as being not cost effective.
There's a few videos on teh JewT00bz about it and how it's done, but we just don't have a very good filtration ability.