why isn’t ocean water filtered and used when somewhere is having a water crisis?
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>ELI5 why isn’t ocean water filtered and …
Being a bit pedantic, but it’s not filtration. Filters remove suspended solid particles, sediment, sand. The salt is dissolved, so you’re trying to remove a liquid (dissolved salt ) from another liquid (water).
The options are distillation or reverse osmosis. Distillation obviously uses a lot of energy to boil off and recondense the water. Reverse osmosis is cheaper, but still uses a lot of energy.
I once operated a small RO system, part of a plant to produce deionized (very pure) water from mains water. The RO pumps were multi-stage high pressure pumps, about 6′ tall. A lot of electricity was needed; much $$$.
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