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Originally Posted by Honu
Actually you can water your lawn and grow a garden with sea water , you run it through copper pipes above ground and the sun causes condensation and also makes the water fresh. They have been doing it for years at the Natural Energy Lab in Hawaii. Its amazing the things you can do with cold sea water , you would think our government woud pursue that more and have at least one desalination plant on the eastern seaboard. Too simple I think .
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i'm not familiar with the particular system used in hawaii but at a guess, i'd say what they're watering with is the condensation from the outside of the copper pipes, not the seawater on the inside.
it would be nice if you could freshen water just by running it through copper. but you can't.
and the reason desalinization plants aren't common is because they require huge amounts of energy. in california, it's cheaper to import water from hundreds of miles away then desalinate the ocean next door. as soon as desalinization makes economic sense, it'll happen. the technology isn't new.