Using solar for desalination

Using solar for desalination

Posted on April 9th, 2010 by admin

Like most populations in the desert region, Saudi Arabia has an ongoing fresh-water shortage problem. The country is one of the largest fresh-water producers using the process of desalination. Now the country’s national research agency plans to build the largest desalination plant using… guess… what’s ample in the desert? ..aside from sand … getting warmer… SOLAR!

The plant will operate using a PV concentration technology developed by none other than Big Blue himself, aka IBM. The technology focuses 2,300 times the power of the sun onto a a single square-centimeter solar cell. The cell doesn’t get damaged because of an indium-gallium liquid-metal alloy that acts as a heat sink, by moving the heat away from the cell. In addition to the new PV technology, the plant is also using a new reverse osmosis based water filtration system, also developed by IBM and University of Texas at Austin.

Energy use takes up more than half of the cost of running a desalination plant, and current desalination plants rely on fossil fuels for that energy. Even though solar power is still more expensive than fossil fuels in most places, the long term savings costs make it an ideal solution for such a project. In addition, the substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is just another great perk of such a system. Completion for the plant is scheduled for 2012, and when completed, the plant will produce 30,000 cubic meters of desalinated water per day, which is enough to meet the basic needs of 100,000 people.

(via MIT Technology Review)

Tags: IBM, indium-gallium liquid-metal alloy, PV concentrated, Saudi Arabia, solar, water desalination

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 11:34 am and is filed under Featured Content, Solar Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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