[smackeyacky]

Except that the amount of water needs to be augmented as it disappears through usage and evaporation. So you’d run out pretty quickly.

Large scale desalination might be necessary but I think the article is downplaying the brine issue. I don’t think we’re running out of table salt so trying to use it for harvesting metals will be an environmental challenge at the scale being proposed here.

[bilsbie]

I feel like the brine issue is a red herring. Coming from first principles the ocean is unbelievably big such that no practical amount of desalination will change the oceans salinity. (Plus most desalinated water will make it back to the ocean eventually anyway)

It really is just a matter of distributing the brine water over a large area.