Are there any large investments being made to desalinate ocean water and turn the purified water into hydrogen fuel like NASA’s plan to do with lunar ice water? eli5

Question

Are there any large investments being made to desalinate ocean water and turn the purified water into hydrogen fuel like NASA’s plan to do with lunar ice water? eli5

In: 69

Answer 1

NASA turning water into fuel is only economical because that water is already in space. It costs NASA $10k to get 1 pound of water into space, and a similar cost for each pound of fuel they bring to space. Using water and fuel that’s already in space would be significantly cheaper.

Here on Earth, that’s almost never the case. Making hydrogen fuel is a potential way to store energy here on Earth, but we always get less energy out of it than we put in due to inefficiencies.

Desalination has its own issues. It takes a lot of energy, and it creates a lot of extremely salty brine that you can’t just release into the environment without reeking havoc on the ecosystem.