Is the Salt in the World’s Oceans a renewable resource and if so how does it regenerate?

Question

In other words, if we were to use or harvest the salt in the Ocean will it renew itself and if so how?

Answer 1

Some excellent answers already to this one. As already stated:

1) there is a LOT of salt around and so we are unlikely to ever impact the amount available.
2) Many of our uses of salt doesn't change it chemically ...so eventually it gets recycled (through drainage etc..)
3) Salt is always being washed out of rocks by rivers (see the question on "why are the seas salty and rivers not) so its not that the amount in the sea is fixed.

The issue with 'renewable' resources is really one of supply and demand. So if we take something "unrenewable" like oil, when we use it, we tend to burn it into other compounds (usually co2, h20 and some minor bits and pieces So2 etc...). To 'recycle' this into oil would take millions of years (the co2 gets locked into plants or animals, they die, get buried, cooked, turn into kerogens....expel oil...) and unfortunately, we are just not that patient! Furthermore, oil is a comparatively rare resource (well, compared to salt) and we need a lot of it. As a consequence we are gradually getting through the know reserves. This makes it "unrenewable" in HUMAN time frames (most of the oil we are using would have been in the surface environment in the Jurassic).

Remember, the earth is a fairly closed system. We might alter stuff...but the basic elements are always remain. In this sense everything is eventually renewable because nothing ever "disappears"..we just tend to see things in terms of our limited lifespans.

Its usually things like solar power and wind energy which are described as 'renewable resources' . In these cases, we are just directly capturing energy that would otherwise be lost to the environment.

Answer 2

I believe salt is a renewable resouce because it can be renewed through the process of weathering of rock materials along the coastlines by the action of waves, or, by nutrient flows which carry salt nutrients from decomposed marine organism from upstreams which meet the headwaters composing of the sea. However, salt can be classified as a Potentially Renewable Resource meaning that it is renewable but its renewablity depends upon certain human responses to its continued availability. Moreover, if we were humans were to extract 80 percent of salt concertration from the sea, it would take a long period of times for salt to regenerate itself through chemical and biological processes.....

Answer 3

Thats kind of an interesting question...salt in the ocean isn't used at such a rate that it even needs to 'regenerate' and the salt in the worlds ocean can cover every continent....so any way the answer is...yes its renewable...and it 'regenerates' via rain..( even the water you drink has salt in it) and mineral deposits from the earths crust...

Answer 4

It is a renewable source
it gets recycled back into the oceans via the drains from our houses
by the sea creatures ( excreta and more)
mainly it can be regenerated by the rocks in the sea which are continuously being eroded

Answer 5

Yes the ocean is a renewable resource.

Answer 6

Everything ends up back where it came from.

We do harvest salt from the sea, go to a gorcery store and ask for sea-salt...

The seas are so vast and so deep that I doubt that we could so much as reduce the concentration of salt in the water by 1/1,000,000 of one percent.

Even so, salt we eat doesn't just vanish-- It comes back to the environment and makes its way back to the sea...

Answer 7

no it isnt renewable...unless you dessolve EPIC amounts of salt rock from mountains...hahahaha >< nice idea though

Answer 8

Whale semen.