[derekp7]

Dump it on the roads in the North during the winter.

Or, more seriously, if it is salt that was extracted from the sea, there shouldn't be much harm in putting it back. The fresh water that was extracted will end up back in the sea also, so overall there should be no increase in salinity (except locally where the salt is dumped).

[Mankhool]

There are other products that come out of the process with the salt. There is a good example of the Persian Gulf because of the number of installations and the ability to easily measure the increase in salinity and contaminants.

http://www.warponline.org/uploads/contents/103-content-9.-En...

[azinman2]

Why can't we just eat the salt?

[maxerickson]

A liter of seawater has 35 grams of salts in it (I looked it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater ). Compare that to the recommended daily intake of several grams of salt.

It's also the case that most of the desalination methods produce concentrated brine instead of dry, clean salt (so extracting the salt would require further energy), but not needing that much of it is the bigger reason.

[azinman2]

I didn't mean to drink it, I meant to turn it into table salt.

Seems like there ought to be some kind of further usage of it.. industrial or otherwise.

[maxerickson]

I got that. For every liter of seawater that is desalinated, there would be ~35 grams of table salt. On a given day a person might use 4 grams of salt.

Given typical water usage, you quickly have salt for an awful lot of people (salt for hundreds of people per person consuming the water).

I guess other users would be welcome, even if they just take it for free that probably saves the desal plant on disposal costs.