re: First US City on track to run out of water

I have followed the GCGV Facebook pages for almost two year and have had some input through that medium without a single response in that period. Help me by providing access to their "active water reduction map"

recirculating cooling water is a distraction. when you draw material/heat balances properly as we were taught 58 years ago at LSU, you will see that what they do is only marginally better than a 100 year old steam driven farm tractor with regards to water usage.

The wastewater treatment system looks to be aerobic which beats a lot of water into the air, when they could have used anaerobic like Dow's ethylene site uses about 60 miles north for the last 30 years.

A couple years ago Exxon GCGV did have an annual HS&E excellence report published where they featured the donation of rain barrels to the community to fix the water shortage.

You can also do a fun request of chatgpt, asking it to id how many tank trucks of fresh water per day are sent to the air from an ethylene plant with 120,000 hp condensing turbines using evaporative coolers for heat rejection. You may have to specify 600 or 1200 psi steam pressure.

What is an axe? Are you talking about alpha chi sigma the chem fraternity?

A water crisis is one of the biggest scams we’ve ever heard. A distillation plant is a very simple operation.

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Considering they haven't had the funds to build one and it takes a decade to get them online....

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We can pull out crude/gas from the ground, treat the gas, and then move the crude, NGLs, and residue and build the piepleine to connect this all to the gulf coast feom New Mexico in under two years but we cant build a desalinization plant on the Gulf Coast and move the water into town?

WTF is so special about filtering water?

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Fact is, our city council is full of shitheads who refuse to work together

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I had lunch a while back with a guy from CC who said the same.

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We can pull out crude/gas from the ground, treat the gas, and then move the crude, NGLs, and residue and build the piepleine to connect this all to the gulf coast feom New Mexico in under two years but we cant build a desalinization plant on the Gulf Coast and move the water into town?

WTF is so special about filtering water?

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As stated it's economy. The US treats water at a crazy low cost generally.

The largest desalination plant in the world could satisfy some of the smaller major cities in the US, but it would require a dedicated power plant about the size of the one that the new LA datacenter is going to require.

As always it's about money, Corpus and the Port are dead set on doing the plant inside the inner harbor. They are dead set on the intake and discharge pipes being located in CC Bay. That is a non starter for most folks and is why several of the counsel members have rejected those efforts. There are at least a half dozen different entities trying to get permitting to build the first de-sal plant to start selling water. One out on the island near Port A has given into the pressure and agreed to put the inlet and discharge pipes at least 3 miles into the gulf. Given that I'd say they are probably in the lead to get the required permits and funding. The City did a half arse environment study that didn't go into any detail about environmental impact of the bay, it was a joke to get a predetermined outcome and it showed. They want to dump a minimum of 50 million gallons of concentration brine into Corpus Christi bay daily at the inner harbor location the city is pushing. There is no place in the world where that kind of discharge is released into a shallow bay system. It would wreck the water quality, the middle coast has an economic impact from tourism of about 1.2 billion annually, a great majority of that is from a healthy bay system. Not to mention the thousands of jobs tied to that impact. A private company just made them an offerto build the plant, pipe in and out offshore, and they gave a up front price they would charge for the water once up a running. The deadline passed on the proposal and they pulled the offer.

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and it takes a decade to get them online

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Is this hyperbole or is this some known fact?

Or sarcasm?

based on your suggestion I did locate the published sustainability report and it does have coverage of the efforts to use water wisely at their new ethylene complex in Huizou China. No comment about the critical issue in Corpus.

Upon pulling up the google earth map for that industrial complex, it appears to have 2 ethylene complexes new/old, and I assume the new one is Exxon's that started up in 2025. There is a 600 foot wide river at the border to the site which would support the idea that water is more available in the china location than Corpus. There are 66 fin fan turbine exhaust condensers located above the pipe racks in the ethylene plant indicating the bulk of the heat reject duty is direct to the air rather than through evaporative cooling which wastes water. The China site does make use of some evaporative cooling probably driven by process approach temperatures.

"stop shifting the blame". There is no blame in the business of science and economics. If a company wants to talk about sustainability its about gathering the facts and adjusting the work process based on best new data. The GCGV site will adjust to be sustainable. It will either run out of water and shutdown or water will be priced high enough to justify retrofit. The only thing stopping them from taking action is deciding who is in control, city or GCGV

Fair enough, and I appreciate you actually pulling the report. I’m not arguing that GCGV should be immune from criticism or that it shouldn’t adapt to changing conditions.

But if there is “no blame in the business of science and economics,” why have you spent this entire thread blaming Exxon? You most certainly have an axe to grind. Gathering facts and adjusting to new data applies to Corpus Christi too. The city courted the project, approved its water demand, offered the economic terms, and promised additional supply by 2023. Then it failed to deliver.

GCGV may need to retrofit. No matter how badly you want it to, that still doesn’t absolve the local officials who created the conditions, collected the benefits, and ignored the approaching problem for nearly a decade.

Apparently accountability is perfectly scientific when discussing Exxon, but becomes an unhelpful distraction the moment local government enters the conversation. For the life of me, I don’t understand why you’re so unwilling to acknowledge that.

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I recommend Texas annex Louisiana

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Not worth dealing with the political idiocy of the populace, I'll pass.