Saltworks Technologies: low-cost desalination

UPDATED
Two Canadians, Ben Sparrow and Joshua Zoshi, founders of Saltworks Technologies, appear to have developed a truly low-cost desalination technology.   The pair have discovered a way to use the heat of the sun to power the process, reducing the cost of desalination by 80%. The Economist reports that the beauty of their system is that ".... the only electricity needed is the small amount required to pump the streams of water through the apparatus. All the rest of the energy has come free, via the air, from the sun."  

According to the company's website:

Saltworks' patent pending technology employs an innovative thermo-ionic energy conversion system that uses up to 80 percent less electrical/mechanical energy relative to leading desalination technologies. The energy reduction is achieved by harnessing low temperature heat and atmospheric dryness to overcome the desalination energy barrier. Saltwater is evaporated to produce a concentrated solution. This solution, which has concentration gradient energy, is fed into Saltworks' proprietary desalting device to desalinate either seawater or brackish water. Some electrical energy is used to circulate fluids at a low pressure, yet the bulk of the energy input is obtained through the evaporation of saltwater.

As this technology is most useful in hot, desert climates lacking in water, it could change the world.

UPDATE 1

A Reuter's article surveys the environmental hazards of desalination technology. The main problem, of course is the high energy consumption (think more greenhouse gasses) of desalination systems in use today.  But there is another environmental risk factor associated with desalination:

Large-scale desalination engineering could also endanger sea life, the WWF said, urging further research into the tolerance of marine organisms and ecosystems to higher salinity and brine waste, byproducts of the salt removal process.

Does Saltworks also have an answer to the problem of byproduct disposal?   It would be interesting to get their response.

UPDATE 2
A reader who comes across as quite knowledgeable about the question raised in Update 1 responds in comments:

If Sparrow and Zoshi have uncovered a new low- energy method of desalinization, then this is an important discovery.

The problem of the disposal of the extracted salts is not trivial but it is not a particularly difficult one to solve. The salts are a natural materials and their disposal only creates a problem when they are returned to fresh water or to to the ocean where they will increase the salinity of local ocean waters. Many areas of the world are underlain by layers of saline rocks formed from the natural evaporation of sea water. Thus, it seems reasonable to expect that artificial layers of "rock" salt could be constructed and covered to prevent any significant return of the salts to the local environment. Also, most of the landmass of the world has saline groundwater at depth. Some of these saline waters are considerably more salty than sea water and concentrated saline waters from a desalinization plant could be injected into such formations and so kept from the local biosphere. Such injection of saline wastes into deep wells is an established industrial process. Another solution is to use some of the salts for table salt or industrial salt.

It would be interesting to know how energy-intensive remediation efforts such artificial layering, wells, and injection of saline water tends to be.  The total energy costs of desalination projects -- whether Saltworks or by other means -- should factor waste disposal,  recycling etc.  

Kyoto Treaty, Climate Bill: perverse incentives to clear forests for biofuels

Economist:

the widespread growth of biofuel crops is likely to cause a net global release of greenhouse gases during the first half of the century, as land is cleared and fertilisers are scattered liberally. In the right circumstances the CO2 account, they reckon, could move into profit by mid-century, but the nitrous oxide account never does.

Tim Searchinger’s Science paper, meanwhile, looks at the way the accounts are drawn up in the here and now. Dr Searchinger, who works at Princeton University, and his collaborators point out that the rules for assessing compliance with the Kyoto protocol (which are also included in the version of America’s climate bill that passed the House of Representatives) are biased in favour of biofuels because they fail to account for emissions from land cleared to grow such fuels. Combine that observation with Dr Melillo’s modelling and you have a recipe for some perverse incentives indeed.

Sadly, settled international standards on biofuels or on a trading system that includes their carbon-cutting benefits are probably a long way off. Two more items on the “too busy to do” list of the Copenhagen conference on climate change.

This hardly seems like a valid excuse.