The brine came from the ocean. So just dilute it back to close to ambient salinity using municipal waste water that you are discharging anyway.

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ceejayoz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The brine came from the ocean.

Sure, and enriched uranium comes from the ground, but that doesn't mean it's safe to dump it back in after the enrichment process!

> So just dilute it back to close to ambient salinity using municipal waste water…

Wouldn't it generally be easier to process that municipal waste water, as is already fairly common?

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SoftTalker 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The analogy would be if you "un-enrich" it. Then it's safe. Or at least no worse than when you took it out of the ground.

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ceejayoz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> The analogy would be if you "un-enrich" it.

But you're doing that with the same water you're trying to make in the first place!

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SoftTalker an hour ago | parent [-]

You could just dilute it using fresh seawater, if you used enough and (maybe) spread it over a wider area. The amount of water people need for drinking is a relative drop in the ocean.

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ceejayoz an hour ago | parent [-]

Brine doesn't necessarily behave the way you imagine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinicle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine_pool

	▲	jaggederest an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Blue Planet video of a brinicle, content warning for kind of horrifying death of sea creatures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAupJzH31tc

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Enginerrrd an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Municipal waste water is a much cheaper way to get desalinated water in the first place though.

	▲	lazide an hour ago \| parent [-]
		except for the pharmaceuticals anyway