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4200 J/Kg/Kelvin and 2260 J/kg

Pretty much anything you can do is cheaper than boiling water




(Your second number is off -- it's 2,260 kJ/kg or 2,260,000 J/kg)

There's no therodynamic objection that you can't recover (virtually) all the heat you spent creating steam, when the steam is recondensed back to water. Which is what they do. Distillation methods (multi-stage flash (MSF), multiple effect (MED)) "only" use around 200-400 kJ/kg of heat per water output.

http://www.desware.net/desa4.aspx

Some perspective: at $4/thousand cubic feet natural gas (US of course), this is a heating cost of $0.75-$1.50/cubic meter of desalinated water. High, but not impossible.

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_m.htm




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