This paper is interesting, however, in directly producing crystalline salt, which is lower volume than brine and easier to dispose of, maybe even valuable.
Totally underrated area for academic pursuits.
> The brine byproduct wreaks havoc on sea life when it’s deposited back into the ocean by raising the salt level and lowering oxygen in the water.
Managing return of concentrated brine should be entirely tractable in the literal ocean.
Ships (with long submerged pipes) would be prone to weather events and generally less reliable than an installed pipe. Perforation would be prone to clogging from build up so a nonstarter I would expect. Adding flex tubing and a relocation robot would be a maintenance headache as well. Not sure there is an easy optimization.
...except for the huge piles of salt.
If the salt was not waste, surely people would already be extracting it from the brine and the existing methods would also be "without waste".
I would like to read more about this from an authoritative source.
Let me check, is that a wonderful battery ? Nope.. A promising fusion ? Neither...
Ok, so this must be the fourth kind of pseudo-wonder discovery that will maybe make it out of the lab in 20 years, if the research team managed to get scraps of funding while VC pick the next way to waste pensioners money.
Anyway, whenever they have desalinated enough water to get each researcher a pint, the round is on me.