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gerkletoss t1_j20p2ki wrote

Reply to comment by Surur in UIUC Researchers propose a new way to get fresh water from seawater, without the disadvantages of traditional desalination. They say that a vertical “capture surface” that is 210 m wide and 100 m tall, could extract enough vapor floating above warm oceans to supply 500,000 people with freshwater by lughnasadh

Do they not know about salt fog? The water vapor over the ocean is less saline than the ocean, but still saline enough to really fuck with machines that aren't designed for maritime applications.

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HelmyJune t1_j20zpft wrote

Fog is an aerosol, not vapor. Therefor it could easily be filtered out.

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gerkletoss t1_j211wsd wrote

"Salt fog" is a somewhat colloquial term. Literal fog is not required for significant salt exposure.

And aerosols are not necessarily easy to filter out.

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HelmyJune t1_j218puk wrote

Salt has a boiling point of nearly 1500C so it is only going to be present in air as an aerosol which again would be trivial to filter out. A coffee filter could probably get the majority of it.

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gerkletoss t1_j21d5bx wrote

Boiling and aerosols are not the only way for solids to end up in the air. For one thing, things that begin as aerosols can turn into vapor and leave airborne dust behind.

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