Saudi Thirst for Water Is Creating a Toxic Brine Problem

Saudi Arabia had water before their stint as a wheat exporter. You can literally see them drain their country&#x27;s aquifier into agribusiness:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indexmundi.com&#x2F;agriculture&#x2F;?country=sa&amp;commodity=wheat&amp;graph=production" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indexmundi.com&#x2F;agriculture&#x2F;?country=sa&amp;commodity...</a>

&gt; Saudi Arabia’s desalination plants produce about 31.5 million cubic meters of contaminated water each day. That volume of liquid, most of which is pumped back into the ocean, is equivalent to about 20 million barrels of oil a day, or, double the amount of crude it currently produces<p>I don&#x27;t understand the math.<p>31.5e6 cubic meters * 1e3 liters&#x2F;cubic meter = 31.5e9 liters<p>31.5e9 liters &#x2F; 3.78 liters&#x2F;gallon = 8333333333 gallons<p>8333333333 gallons &#x2F; 42 gallons&#x2F;barrel = 198412698 barrels<p>So it looks like this calculation is off by a factor of 10. Did I miss something?

The article isn&#x27;t clear where the metals are coming from. It could be that the desalination process simply concentrates what&#x27;s already in the seawater.

Why would they chlorinate the water before desalination? And where does the copper come from?

IMO the right direction is not conventional treatment, but as Swebs said, either create new salt flats, or use it as feedstock for algae or other single cell organisms that can be converted to feed, or biofuel.

I&#x27;m under the impression that this is just concentrated seawater?

Imagine what the extraterrestrial anthropologists will say about humans someday...

Unless they are adding chemicals to the water before desalination (which I don&#x27;t see mentioned anywhere), that sounds like the &#x27;brine&#x27; is just ~1.5x concentrated seawater, which will get diluted back again? What am I missing?