Compact machine turns air into ready-to-use gasoline

In 2005 I attended a desalination conversation in Crystal City, VA across the river from Washington DC. It was a meet up between Israeli and American desalination people. The Israelis were preparing to gear up for a massive build out of desalination plants. They were looking for pointers as the USA first developed reverse osmosis desalinatioin back in the 1960’s. At the time the US cost of desalination was 2000@acre foot—where it remains today.

I told the Israeli guys I met that they could do it for $500@ acre foot. They told me I was telling them a pipe dream. 10 years later, Israel and Singapore both desalinate sea water for $500. Their desalination plants are all built on site as one offs.

The Israelis send their desalinated seawater to their cities and then clean it up to brown water standards and send that water to their farms and fields. (I think the Saudis now do the same thing.)

(That model could replicated in West Texas without any changes in current technology—and at prices cheaper than $500@acre foot because its cheaper to desalinate brackish water than seawater..)

Desalination costs are roughly 1/3 energy 1/3 maintenance and 1/3 capital costs.

The flip side of energy costs is the quality of the membranes used for desalinating seawater. In my opinion, the next generation of membranes will be made of graphene, and they will be tunable to remove any specific element.Graphene gives a pore structure that is so fine that almost no energy is required to push the salt water through the membrane.,

The last piece to bringing down desalination costs is materials. Find materials that will extend the life of these machines by 10 years. That shouldn’t be too hard considering that AI is revolutionizing materials research.

So the four parts to lowering desalination costs are this:

1.) Factory-made desalination machines that can be brought on site and work either independently or in concert with other desalination machines.
2.)Either energy too cheap to meter or membranes that so efficient they require almost no energy to desalinate sea water or brackish water.
3.) Materials research new materials to extend the life of desalination machines by at least 10 years.
4.)Turn salt water waste brine from a cost center to a profit center.
5.) Make sure the technology is dual use for both earth and mars. To begin that means the desalination machines have to be able to fit on flatbed trucks or in the bay of space ship.

I had the vision about greening the deserts of earth and mars about 10 years. I made a youtube on it here. The first minute or two are history. then it takes off to vision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AkNOitYmNA

Here’s a rewrite of my last post. I tried to do it on my cell phone. (alas I have old eyes and big fingers.)

I’m having second thoughts. The new generation of chips from Nvidia is water cooled, so the cheapest way to produce the chips is to have a power source with hours daily of no-cost power, with a reliable water source. West Texas fits that description. Once the water is used to cool the chips, it can be used to water plants

Therefore, the greening of West Texas will occur, but only as an afterthought. The speed at which it happens will be a function of the build out of the data centers in places like Abilene, where a big chatgpt center is going up.

There is another reason that Musk would be the right person to do the job. For one thing he has called desalination absurdly cheap. (but I think he’s figuring something in the @600@acre foot. which is good but not as good as it could be.)

The stamping machines he uses for his teslas could be adapted for desalination machines. But it would take some serious R&D to do the job because (current technology) requires a harder metal than aluminum to resist salt corrosion.)

Once that’s mastered however, the capital costs of creating desalination machines just collapses.

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