Renewable Energy and Desalination: A Clean Solution for the Water Industry
Green water desalination is our motivation toward a shiny future in the water industry.
Researchers and scientists from everywhere in the international community are painting on enhancing the affordability and performance of saltwater purification, as potable-water shortage will increase and grow.
Areas like Africa and the Middle East are predicted to call for an ever-developing range of those plant life. Water desalination is a commercial method that calls for big volumes of chemical compounds and energy.
Hence, researchers are targeted at growing revolutionary and green desalination strategies and equipment for long-time period utilization at decreased charges and environmental impact.
Can renewable energy be the future of desalination?
Climate change is reducing supply while agriculture, industry, urbanization and population increase are all driving up demand.
For every degree of Celsius of global warming, 7% of the world’s renewable water resources could become unavailable.
We need to use less, waste less, reuse more, and create more if we’re going to fight the lack of fresh water.
The availability of freshwater has been constantly declining while the demand has been steadily rising, according to the sobering words of McKinsey & Company.
The world’s population tripled in the 20th century, yet water demand climbed six-fold. ( click here to know more about Renewable Desalination: A Sustainable Solution for Fresh Water Production )
Huge potential for renewable desalination
Between 2020 and 2025, 20% of new desalination facilities are expected to be fueled by renewable sources, according to the Global Clean Water Desalination Alliance.
The alliance was established by the International Desalination Association and consists of the energy and desalination sectors, water utilities, governments, financial institutions, academic institutions and R&D.
Its objective is to scale up the use of clean desalination technologies and reduce CO2 emissions from existing water desalination plants through coordinated actions.
Around 1% of renewable energy is now used for desalination on a global scale.
Governments that are leading the way are utilizing this untapped potential.
The goal of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 is to produce 9.5 GW of renewable energy by 2023.
Renewable energy is a requirement for all new desalination facilities in Western Australia.
The renewable options for desalination
Theoretically, solar, wind, wave, or geothermal energy might all be used to power desalination.
Each has benefits and disadvantages, which are listed below.
Wind
Reverse osmosis desalination can be powered by wind, a well-liked and reliable renewable energy source.
Wind power is used in the majority of large-scale renewable energy-powered desalination facilities.
Because of their closeness to an energy source, a water source, and a user population, coastal and island settlements are especially well-suited for wind-powered desalination.
The Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology in the UK, Gran Canaria (Wind-RO, seawater, 5-50 m3/d), Fuerteventura (Wind-diesel hybrid system, seawater, 56 m3/d) and other major wind-based desalination facilities are listed by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
The 80-megawatt Emu Downs Wind Farm in Australia supplies power to the Perth Seawater Desalination Plant, the nation’s first of its kind.
As a set of paddles are moved back and forth by the waves to generate electricity, which is then used to filter the seawater, the system uses wave energy to pressurize water and pump it to an onshore treatment facility. ( click here to know more about Global Wind Power : A Promising Future )
Waves
The kinetic energy in the waters is enormous. More than 35,000 horsepower is generated per mile of coastline by an average 4-foot, 10-second wave reaching the shore.
Although wave energy is challenging to harness, a promising pilot has been conducted in Western Australia.
According to Water Technology, in 2014 Garden Island established itself as the first “commercial-scale wave-powered enterprise in the world to show both power and freshwater generation from the ocean waves.”
Cape Verde, an island nation off the west coast of Africa, will also get a wave-powered desalination plant.
Resolute Marine Energy, the project’s developer, asserts that the so-called Wave20 facility will produce drinking water for a third of the cost of traditional systems.
While a series of paddles are being moved back and forth by the waves to generate electricity that is used to filter the seawater, the system uses wave energy to pressurize water and pump it to an onshore treatment plant. ( click here to know more about Wave Energy: Riding the Oceans for Clean Power )
Geothermal energy
Geothermal energy is helpful for both thermal desalination and reversing osmosis since it can produce both heat and power.
By providing 1,920 m3/d of fresh water for the neighborhood at incredibly low prices, a project on the Greek island of Milos demonstrated the potential of geothermal energy for desalination.
However, the process is severely constrained by the environment. ( click here to know more about Geothermal: A Treasure is under Your Feet )
Solar energy
The most promising long-term, the renewable energy source for sustainable desalination is generally considered to be solar power.
Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and photovoltaic systems are the two primary methods of solar-powered desalination (PV).
Thermal desalination frequently employs CSP, which produces direct heat and is utilized to evaporate water.
Reverse osmosis pumps are powered by electricity produced by PV, which is produced using solar panels.
The World Bank claims that PV-based reverse osmosis solar desalination is the most popular solar energy option and the main subject of ongoing research.
Sea waters – academia link
As we know the liveliest companies belong to Academia, which usually decreases TRL.
But, because the subject matter is getting towards the marketplace and different businesses and organizations begin to be lively in this field, it generally comes with a lower aggregated quantity of data however a boom in the wide variety (or percentage) of patents, trademarks, and news (that speak approximately VC offers and startup acquisitions).
Top organizations worldwide desalinating water for the Chemical and Plastic industries
The maximum of the groups running in this subject matter belongs to Academia (73%).
MIT is one of the maximum lively companies on this subject matter, and features issued extraordinary medical studies and patent programs.
Primarily, they discover desalination thru ion attention polarization, and in addition, they check out reverse osmosis.
As for Sylvan Source, they have got lately implemented a patent in business water purification and desalination that makes use of alkaline hydroxides.
Finally, some other organization that has exciting studies in water desalination is Mitsubishi. They are the businesses with greater patent programs on the subject.
Their line of studies is aimed toward the strong plant’s era wherein the used wastewater is handled and desalinated to split it into regenerated water and focused way
Evolution of the organization occurrence in wastewater desalination
As we will see, Universities truly ruled the hobby within side the subject matter till 2017, wherein there has a shift within side the trend.
From 2018, SMEs began to go into and dominate the subject matter (in addition to companies, with a decreased intensity) and, already in 2019, are the maximum lively companies in wastewater desalination.
This approach that the generation is accomplishing in the marketplace.
References
[1] El-Dessouky, H. T., & Ettouney, H. M. (1999). Plastic/compact heat exchangers for single-effect desalination systems. Desalination, 122(2-3), 271-289.
[2] El-Dessouky, H. T., & Ettouney, H. M. (2002). Fundamentals of salt water desalination. Elsevier.
[3] Alatiqi, I., Ettouney, H., & El-Dessouky, H. (1999). Process control in water desalination industry: an overview. Desalination, 126(1-3), 15-32.
[4] Arceivala, S. J., & Asolekar, S. R. (2006). Wastewater treatment for pollution control and reuse. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
[5] Banerjee, S., Chakraborty, C., & Das, D. (2020). An approach towards GIS application in smart city urban planning. In the Internet of Things and Secure Smart Environments (pp. 71-110). Chapman and Hall/CRC.
[6] Miloudi, L., & Rezeg, K. (2018, October). Leveraging the power of integrated solutions of IoT and GIS. In 2018 3rd International Conference on Pattern Analysis and Intelligent Systems (PAIS) (pp. 1-7). IE
