We’re running out of fresh water. I know this sounds weird in a world that is mostly water, but unfortunately all of our oceans are salt water. Desalination has existed for a while, but it’s been expensive and not viable as a reliable source of water. But — you guessed it — that’s changing!
When salt water is converted into fresh water, brine is leftover. That brine is full of salt but also many different kinds of metals, and while it’s generally treated as waste, new methods of extracting the metals from desalination brine could make use of all of that “waste”. If it becomes economically feasible to extract metals from desalination brine rather than mining them elsewhere, the positive gain from that could offset the costs of desalination.
Imagine that, we get freshwater and more metals for our batteries and electronic devices — it’s a win-win.
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