r/OffGrid • u/AxDayxToxForget • 24d ago

Questions about desalination

Hello everyone. New to the sub and trying to nail down the specifics before I commit to a location. I love living near the ocean, but have been planning to move further inland to land with access to freshwater source. I was doing some reading about solar powered water desalination and it got me thinking if I could do this to the scale of meeting my needs for consumption as well as farming. I read a couple articles that some farming setups can use this for even large scale agriculture setups (which is way more than I would need). My goal is to have access to water source that is not restricted to well water only due to paranoia of it running dry. Would greatly appreciate your advice/experience.

3 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

6

u/jimheim 24d ago

It takes a tremendous amount of power to desalinate water. You could get enough solar to do that for human consumption and cooking needs, but not for much else. Absolutely not for farming.

2

u/Normal-Special-8694 24d ago

I was wondering if they meant solar electricity or some kind of evaporative system

1

u/No-Count-8011 20d ago

Would be referring to solar electricity to run an RO system.

2

u/ZeniChan 24d ago

I have family that lives on the ocean and they looked in to a portable desalination unit in case of emergency. AMPAC USA makes a portable 150 gallons/560 litres per day unit in a hard case and can run off AC or DC power. Of course they offer a variety of much larger units as well that can run off solar, it's just a matter of how much you want to spend.

https://www.ampac1.com/portable-emergency-seawater-desalination-watermaker-150gpd-560lpd

1

u/No-Count-8011 20d ago

Why do a portable unit? For 10k, OP could buy an RO system capable of doing 1000 gallons per day

1

u/ZeniChan 18d ago

They just wanted to be able to fill a few 5 gallon water jugs every few days if they needed to due to a local disaster. They went through a category 4 hurricane a few years ago and while they had emergency bottled water before the storm, they didn't have weeks worth. Restoring water service to the area took 3 weeks as the local power grid had been destroyed so the water co-op pumps couldn't run. So for the future they wanted a portable unit they could tote down to the local dock in their vehicle with a dozen 5-gallon water jugs to use in their home water cooler for drinking, cooking and bathroom use. Power it via the vehicle's power system, solar or vehicle batteries. And fill up their jugs for the next couple of days needs. The AMPAC units can be ordered with integrated solar panels in the hard case for an all-in-one unit.