Can I Actually Do This?

My last question of the day was: how is it possible that it requires the same amount of energy to power a 100 liters/hour desalination plant and a 350 liters/hour one?

If it’s really the case, then we’d rather acquire a bigger plant and make it run only during the peak sun hours of each day.

It will cost more to get the larger scale plant, but we will save a ton of money on batteries.

Because we plan to desalinate water using solar energy, we need a lot of batteries, to keep the electricity that we want to use at night.

Turns out that the energy consumption of the plant depends mostly on the 2 pumps used in the system, and they use the same pumps whether it’s a 100 liters/h or a 350 liters/h system.

What matters more though, seems to be TDS (total dissolved solids) of the water.

Basically, the saltier the water, the more energy it takes to desalinate it.

Which makes sense.

So those are the answers I had after talking on WA with an engineer specialized in reverse osmosis from Guangzhou this afternoon.

Not sure you specifically care about desalination, but I’m happy I learned more about this, and felt like sharing it 🙂

—

On a side note, I also learned that one of my friend from the Medicine University finally graduated as a specialist, in a specialty he doesn’t really like (you can choose based on your rank).

A whole decade studying and having no life outside of school, to finally end up being stuck working 50h/week in a job he doesn’t even like.

The “high” salary doesn’t seem to be enough, to make him even try to pretend he is happy.

That’s when I am so glad that my brain froze back then, and that I failed the exam to reach the 2nd year of medicine at 0,2pts.

I felt like I was an idiot, unable to even be in the top 8%, required to go to the next year.

I guess my brain didn’t freeze because I was weak and unprepared, but it was probably a warning to tell me that I should do something else.

Who knows.