What to do with water softener brine discharge

Hi all. I just moved to southwest Michigan and I have a well and septic tank handling my water needs. The well water is moderately hard so I'm considering getting a water softener. If I do, the softener will occasionally discharge about 40-50 gallons of brine containing around 6-12lbs of salts and minerals (sodium, calcium, magnesium, etc.)

The septic system is supposedly able to handle that amount of salt, but I dislike pumping water out of the ground to just flush it down the drain. However, I'm not sure what else I could do with that brine. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to turn that "waste" into a resource?

If you want to go to the trouble of boiling it that might remove some of the salt.

One of the forum members did a topic on removing salt from salt water by making a solar still. So this is also a way to extract the salt from the water.

Maybe you to make a salt water pond to grow sea weed or kelp.

These are the only ways I can think of for using your waste water.

From Google I found that
Septic System Discharge: Standard residential septic tanks can typically handle a 40–50 gallon dump of water softener brine.
The calcium and magnesium can sometimes help counteract the soil-clogging effects of sodium, though excessive sodium can
still slightly impact soil perk around the drain field over decades.
Another alternative is either a solar still or evaporation tank.
And then landfill disposal of the solids.
It brings to mind the issue of the ethics of landfill in a Permies envoronment.

I just realized, after reading these responses, that perhaps this brine could be used in an HHO generator. I'd always thought they were a relatively good idea (for a combustion engine spinoff), but also always felt that needing to have a source of electrolytes to for conductive water enough to support electrolysis was a hinderance as it required sourcing. Now I'm thinking I might have a good source of conductive water on my hands!

Fractional distillation by freezing can recover useful water for trees etc. The ice formed is fairly pure while the brine underneath is concentrated.

The salty brine still remains, stronger but in less volume. That doesn't really solve the original problem. I wonder -- could it be used as an ice melter on roadways?

What is this please?

HHO generator

John C Daley wrote:What is this please?

HHO generator

An HHO generator uses electrolysis to break water molecules down into hydrogen and oxygen which mix to form a highly flammable gas galled oxy-hydrogen (or HHO gas). I've really only ever seen them installed in cars. The HHO generator is onboard and produces gas on demand using electricity from the alternator. The gas is then piped into the carburetor and the fuel in the gas/air mixture is reduced. While the HHO burns cleaner than gasoline, the laws of thermodynamics prevent onboard generation in vehicles from being net positive producers of energy (since the alternator is fueling the reaction and the water and equipment increases carrying load). It can, however, also be used in any application where hydrogen and oxygen are acceptable as fuel sources, such as cooking, heating, welding/soldering, etc. Unfortunately, storage of hydrogen and oxygen is typically dangerous, and they readily react, so they're usually only used as "on-demand" generators.

The water used for the electrolysis needs to be conductive enough to support the process, which is where my salty brine water potentially comes into play.

Just loook up "HHO generator" on youtube and you'll find a whole slew of videos of people who have made homemade generators.