The Israel Salt Company, for example, has struck a deal with the Mekorot desalination plant in the southern port city of Eilat to make high-quality table salt from the leftover sodium.

“A brine discharge line and other discharge facilities are not needed,” wrote a pair of researchers in 2007, adding “non-homogenous salinity distribution profile of the sea is prevented, leaving the sea fauna and flora at this beautiful resort city untouched.”

Ten years later, a study from the Australian government found in the absence of such an arrangement, excess salt runoff can be carefully dropped into the open ocean without significant changes in the ocean’s salinity. //

According to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), concentrated desalination brine can be converted into chemicals with market value.

In a 2019 report, a team of scientists outlined how direct electrosynthesis of desalination waste can produce sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid, both of which are also useful ingredients in plant operations themselves.

Sodium hydroxide, also known as “caustic soda,” can be used to pretreat incoming seawater and lower its acidity, allowing membrane filters to last longer. Plants creating their own sodium hydroxide would no longer need to purchase the chemical from a third-party seller when the product can be made onsite. In fact, plants could make so much of it that excess products could be sold on the open market as another stream of revenue.

Hydrochloric acid from recycled brine discharge can also be used as a cleaning chemical inside the plant, or can be exploited to produce hydrogen. Hydrogen is an emissions-free fuel, the only byproduct of which is water when consumed in a fuel cell to generate electricity.

Both hydrochloric acid and hydrogen are lucrative byproducts that could be sold off by plant operators in addition to excess sodium hydroxide.