The Brine Problem

For every liter of freshwater produced, desalination creates about 1.5 liters of concentrated brine — super-salty water typically pumped back into the ocean. Globally, desalination plants produce 142 million cubic meters of brine daily, creating local dead zones around discharge points where marine life cannot survive.

This brine sinks to the seafloor, raising salinity and starving the surrounding water of oxygen, so marine life near discharge points suffers. Yet brine is not pure waste — it carries valuable minerals, including lithium, magnesium, and potassium, that could one day be worth recovering.