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Could wastewater plants simply heat up water past 500C to decompose all chemicals and output clean water? (fedia.io)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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Our waterways are becoming more and more polluted due to PFAS, plastics, medicines, drugs, and new chemicals made by companies that just hand over the responsibility of cleaning to plants paid for by public moneys. Detecting the different chemicals and filtering them out if getting harder and harder. Could the simple solution of heating up past a point where even PFAS/forever chemicals decomposes (400C for PFAS, 500C to be more sure about other stuff) be alright?

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[–] 0 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

The point you missed and everyone's autism is preventing y'all from seeing that the fact that we have water and elecricity flowing to most houses in the USA. Things which were deemed impossible back in the day. Imagine the energy cost of conditioning the air individually at everyone's house let alone their moving car too. It would be iMpOsSiBlE.

It's not 100 perfect so let's do nothing.- great idea enjoy your day.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    An idea that requires 11.5 times more energy production on a daily basis than the entire country's output is a lot more than "Not perfect." So maybe you pipe down before you go calling everyone who disagrees with you autistic, m'kay?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You're right technology never improves. I loved you in that movie "Idiocracy" Red_october he's got what plants crave! Enjoy your job at Costco.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Heating water is a matter of physics, not technology. The amount of energy used to increase the temperature of water is literally how the units are defined. Do feel free to make a breakthrough on Fusion power though, I hear it's still only 20 years away.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Technology refers to the tech that generates the energy to heat the water.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Which doesn't change the fact that it would require more than 11 times the total energy production of the entire country. If the solution to a problem requires some miracle technology that increases energy production by more than an order of magnitude, it's not so much a solution as it is a fanciful dream. When step one is "Solve cold fusion" then it's not a serious solution.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That's the point @al_Kaholic@lemmynsfw.com is making: technology for energy generation will improve and provide enough energy to make incineration of water (or give it another name) possible.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    And it's a stupid point. Just to power this one single endeavor we would have to increase the TOTAL NATIONAL POWER OUTPUT by more than 11 times. For this one thing. That's not just a new invention, that's not suddenly figuring out how to make Thorium-based nuclear reactors work, that's not squeezing a few percent more in efficiency out of Solar or figuring out how to recycle wind turbines or investing in pumped hydroelectric storage. It would take a literally world changing development. More than an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE more output. For ONE project. If you can make that kind of leap in energy output then investing it all into this wildly inefficient and dubiously effective method of cleaning up waste water is the least of your concerns. That kind of energy output is the stuff of post-scarcity utopian dreams, and your plan is still to just use it all to pressurize and superheat water to get rid of SOME of the pollutants in it.

    It's a stupid idea.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You are aware of what community you're in, right?

    And as I've explained again, I'm not asking if it's feasible, nor that is be done yesterday. I'm asking about the process. You're answering a related question, but not the one I asked.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I am aware yes. It was not a stupid question, but the answer was No. What strayed into Stupid territory was people trying to act like the simple physics of heating up water will at some point change enough to change the answer.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    While you aren't wrong overall, heat exchangers and heat pumps could drastically reduce the energy requirements, perhaps getting the energy requirements down to 4 or even 2 times the national capacity. This doesn't means that it's impossible, it just changes how impossible. It also doesn't change that there would be cheaper ways than just heating all the water, or that those ways would also be cheaper with more efficient heat management systems.

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