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Raising water temperature from 10 to 500 degrees requires about 500 calories/mm3. That's 2 MJ/litre, meaning if you want to heat 1 liter/second you need 2 MW with perfect insulation, so a power plant of say 10 MW.
A post industrial world citizen could probably get by on 200 l/day (US averages about 300/day). That needs 2 kW/person/day.
Total global energy production is about 630 EJ which averages out at about 12 TW.
Meaning if the whole global energy production went to treat water in that way, we have enough clean water for about 6 million people.
How the hell do people use that much water? Are they including water consumption needed for the products we use or? Let's say a flush is 8L and the average person flushes 5 times a day, that's 40L. The average person needs about 2L of water a day. Let's say an average shower is 100L. Cleaning dishes at worst is probably like 20L per person without a dishwasher. That's like 160L of water per day and I feel like most of those were over-estimates. How did they get to that number?
They eat meat.
They use AI.
How much water do you believe AI consumes? The 31 billion land animals we keep in captivity and the crops we grow to feed them dwarf most human water consumption.
https://oecd.ai/en/wonk/how-much-water-does-ai-consume
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2024/02/25/ai-is-accelerating-the-loss-of-our-scarcest-natural-resource-water/
That's a lot, but by some back of the envelope math I calculated that American consumption of cheese alone uses four times that amount in a year.
Based on this, 4 oz of cheese uses 450 liters of water. https://foodprint.org/blog/dairy-water-footprint/
Based on this, the average American consumes 41 lbs of cheese per year. Each lb of cheese uses 1800 liters of water per the above. https://www.statista.com/statistics/183785/per-capita-consumption-of-cheese-in-the-us-since-2000/
That means that each US citizen uses 73,800 liters of water per year on cheese alone.
Multiply that by 340E6, the US population, you get 25 trillion liters of water per year. That's 25 billion cubic meters of water a year.
Not that AI is environmentally friendly by any stretch, but dairy is the equivalent of like, a dozen AI industries all stacked on top of each other. Feel free to check my math and correct me as needed.
I always find those kinds of numbers difficult because they include rain water in that estimation.
What percentage of the 450 liters of water comes from those different sources? How impactful is a green water footprint vs a blue water footprint vs a gray water footprint? If the 120g of cheese were made from 100% blue water, that would definitely be problematic. But if it were 100% green water, that would most likely be less of an issue.
Next, you have to consider how the water comes into the calculation. Is it just considering the water for feed crops of the water that the cow itself consumes? And if it's feed crops, the type is also important. Some feed is simply the byproduct of crops that are used for human consumption e.g maize only has maybe 10% of its biomass for human consumption. Would simply throwing away the other 90% be considered wasteful or useful? And how does that factor into the water calculation?
And a final point regarding feed, is what kind of feed it is and where it's grown. Feed may not only be byproduct of human comestible crops but also crops that cannot be consumed by humans at all, and they can also grown in places where human comestible crops cannot be grown.
Now you have to compare that water for server farms. I have little knowledge thereof, but my guess is that they don't wait for rain to cool their servers and it probably is more blue water than not. It maybe as entangled and complicated as the source of water for cheese, I don't know.
My point is, it's not an apples to apples comparison. Water consumption doesn't always equal water consumption. To drive the point home, would you consider the water required to raise fish in a landlocked country the same as that of a coastal country?
What is your actual point? "Don't worry about water consumption?"
Perhaps there have been times of famine where it kept people alive, but today and throughout most of human history, it's simply killing people. Something like eight of the top ten causes of human death are consequences of diet. The leading cause of all human death goes away completely without consumption of a class of products that includes all dairy. Dairy is not healthy to consume, it is harmful.
Grain lasts years. Starchy tubers (which we are uniquely evolved to consume and what was actually what supported the energy requirements of our large brain in pre-technological times) last all winter, or longer if you don't dig them up. Salt preserves for years. So does pickling. Hell, even dogs are smart enough to preserve food by burying it in an anaerobic environment. A whole lot has to go wrong for the milk from an animal to be the margin by which a person survives, and by that point the animal has probably already been slaughtered. Exceptions like African bushmen who consume blood as a primary staple are quite rare.
Yeah but it says "at home" and gives recommendations how you personally can reduce water consumption (like more efficient taps or showerheads), which makes me believe that it's not your entire direct and indirect water consumption (which realistically isn't even relevant for the argument since the water used for crops isn't gonna be getting treated anyway)
The estimations for water required to make meat even include rainwater. As if cows are out standing in the field collecting water through their hooves or something.
The crops are literally standing in a field collecting water through their roots. Sometimes it comes from rain, but an ever-increasing share comes from irrigation. One way or another, that water has to be accounted for. Rainfall is a limited resource in agriculture, like any other source of water. Even entire rivers are often 100% consumed by agriculture.
Ok yeah the second part makes sense, but for the first part I was calculating it based on hand washing, dishwashers would be way less since you have to split the usage per person in the household, which holds for hand washing as well. Idk for other people but when I'm alone I use the dishwasher probably every 3-4th day and for handwashing I'd say 20L is realistic, double it maybe but still isn't that much.
Yes, with our current energy output it would not be possible, but I'm asking about whether even theoretically it could be an easier way to clean water. Maybe in 10, 20, 50 or 100 years it's a method worth pursuing.
This is simple math. We would need to increase our energy production by 1000 times to just treat water, maybe only 250 times if we used more efficient systems than simply heating it and letting the heat dissipate. If we doubled our energy production every year, it would still take a decade to do it (8 years if we were aiming at 250 times). That isn't a realistic amount for a civilization at our tech level.
You say 1000, another poster says 11, and yet another gives another number I can't remember.
If I'm reading the graph right on page 20 of Homo Sapiens' Energy Dependence and Use Throughout Human History and Evolution, in 1820 we needed about 20 EJ. That's a 31 fold increase to ~530 EJ in 2010 (190 years). Looking at the chart, you can see that the rate of increase has sped up, not slowed down. In 1960 it was ~120 EJ making it a 4x increase in years.
It might take time, but it's not impossible. And unless a great calamity happens upon us, we will not stay at our current tech level for another 200 years.
I understand the pessimism, but my question wasn't about "is this possible within our lifetimes" or "how much energy would this need" but "Could wastewater plants simply heat up water past 500C to decompose all chemicals and output clean water?". I just want to know if with our understanding the water will be clean after going through a procedure where it's heated past 500C. That could be once or multiple times, it could involve adding a filter, removing deposited waste material, etc.
The part you're studiously ignoring is plenty of people saying yes, you could do this, but that it's wildly inefficient. You could also power a bike by getting the biggest rock you could throw, tying a rope to it, applying the brakes on your bike, throwing the rock, releasing the brakes, and then pulling on the rope until you've collected your rock, and repeating until you've reached your destination. This will always work. But as long as your bike is in earthlike conditions, there will always be easier ways to do it. This is also the case for your idea.
You're ignoring that I'm responding to the messages that say it's wildly inefficient by saying things can change. Nowhere am I debating it's not inefficient. You're arguing with a strawman you built.
If by strawman, you mean fundamental laws of physics, then yes, you're correct. If we find ways to break basic laws of thermodynamics, then I won't be worrying about ways to sterilize water, I'll be worrying about how to make faster-than-light starship.