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Japan has opened its first osmotic power plant

(www.theguardian.com)
301 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 25 Aug 25 02:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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elil17 ◴[26 Aug 25 17:55 UTC] No.45029999[source]▶
They really fail to explain a key point here. The reason you colocate this with a desalination plant is because you use the super-salty wastewater from desalination as the salty side of the osmosis power plant. Then you find some wastewater which is low in salt (such as semi-treated sewage), and use that as the fresh side of the osmosis power plant.

The end result is that the salty wastewater is partially diluted, which means it has a lower environmental impact when it is discharged to the ocean.

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1. SkyPuncher ◴[27 Aug 25 03:59 UTC] No.45035322[source]▶
Wow, that completely changes my opinion.

In fact, it almost seems that you could simple pull in sea water as the “low salt” water and still have a large enough delta against a brine solution.

Really interesting that it also solves the brining issue.