desalinisation

[willis2031]

hello all, i did a search but not much cropped up. was wondering if anybody had any ideas about desalinating water from a river? was thinking about prepping a patch later on this year near a river i occasionally fish and camp on. thinking about running a pump and if possible run the water through some sort of filtration process on its way to the plants. just trying to make life a bit easier. i dont mind hauling water down there but if theres a way to desalinate the water from the river fairly cost effectively i wouldnt mind giving it a crack. anyone have any thoughts??

cheers

Edited February 10, 2011 by willis2031

[BudJones]

The easiest way to desalinise water is by evaporation.

If you want me to draw you a design for a system to desalinise water I'd be more than happy to, or you could try to find one on google.

 

Aaron

[willis2031]

sure aaron. thanks heaps. anyone else have any thoughts?

[chunky]

I have been thinking about this lately, I'm sure you could use large clear water bottles and a bit of hose and just let the evaporated water drip onto your plants, not to stealthy though.

[Darth Desolas]

I'm fairly sure you could get a couple of reasonably sized pumps and just run the water through a Reverse Osmosis filter, which will remove just about everything from the water. It does however require a reasonably high pressure and a good amount of time to obtain large amounts of pure water. These filters also discard anything from 1/2 to 2/3 of the water that goes through them out the end as more saline than it goes in. So for every 3L of water you run through the RO, you might get a 1L of water that has almost nothing in it whatsoever, perfect for growing absolutely fantastic plants. But you'll also get 2L of water that's saltier than the water you treated in the first place, which you have to direct off and discard.

 

Distillation as the others are suggesting can produce reasonable amounts of quite good water, but it may be a lot more digging and a heck of a lot more effort than its worth.

 

Any chance you could advise what kind of EC and pH levels the river water comes out as? And how much water do you think you'll need over a cycle? You'll need to consider how much you'll require at short notice on hot days, and how easy it would be to get large tanks to the area and install them without attracting attention.

 

Oh dear I think the vape I just had has gotten to me and is making me ramble a bit. Apologies. Good luck with the setup, I'll be interested to hear how you get around the problem of water supply.

[willis2031]

interesting points darth. not sure what the ph and ec are, thats something ill have to look into. i would also have to access the spot by boat which would increase the chance of suspicion. id probably need a considerable amount of water through the summer too, it gets pretty hot here around that time of year. sounds like just as much effort as lugging the water down there myself... not sure. ill do a bit more recon and have a bit more of a think about it. see what i can come up with

cheers