This was a Donald Duck comic when I was a kid in the 1970s. The smart inventor (Ludwig Von Drake) was trying to mine gold from the ocean, but the energy cost was too great and so it was done at a loss.
We try this once in a while, and it’s still too expensive.
And in 10 years: Fishes are dying due to the severe lack of nutrition in sea water after humans exploited it for mining of metals. We’re not learning of past mistakes.
lol and what else
this process is already in use in dead sea chemical works and it’s about separating magnesium, just this time it uses desalination brine as an input
so it gives some table salt, and depending on what you want it to output, potassium chloride, magnesium salts or metal, gypsum, lithium
Returned brine is damaging to seafloor so returning less salt is a net improvement
Might as well take out all the plastic while at it.