The Energy Supply And Usage Of Renewable Energy

Today, desalination is a common process that's used in seaside cities and towns worldwide. There are more than 15,000 desalination plants around the world providing freshwater from salt and brackish water alike (Planet Green 2011). This number continues to grow as researchers work to improve the process, both in terms of cost effectiveness and energy efficiency (DSE 2011). But countries such as Australia, Israel and even the United States are continually adding desalination plants of various sorts into their water-management portfolios. The facilities are common in North Africa and the Mideast, where freshwater is scarce (Chandler 2008).

Advancements include such new and emerging technologies as forward osmosis, low temperature distillation, membrane distillation, pressure osmosis, biomimetic and graphene membranes” (IDA). Many claim that technology is not advanced yet and that using desalination while waiting for technology to advance is too costly and will end up causing irreversible damage; “Randy Truby, comptroller of the International Desalination Association, says that advances in manufacturing processes have allowed 450 sq ft of membrane to be crammed into each cartridge, compared with 300 sq ft when they first came on the market. But treating seawater still requires pressure of about 80 bar, 40 times more than car tyres. That is why treating seawater is more energy-intensive than brackish or wastewater, which require less force”

The total amount of fresh water resources due to climate changes causing glaciers retreated, reduced river flows and shrinking lake has decreased. Many of the aquifers (underground water) that were quickly exhausted aren’t substituted at the same speed. Although total fresh water resources have not been consumed, they become very polluted, salty, unsuitable or unavailable for drinking, industrial and agricultural usages. To avoid a global water crisis, governments are looking to find ways to make better use of water. Water desalination has become a technologically and economically viable solution to tackle the challenges associated with increasing water shortages existing all over the world [`1,

With the unprecedented current levels of world population combined with generally high standards of living, humans are running up against the limits of available fresh water. Desalination is an increasingly important means to meet the water needs of people. Since there is so much more salt water in the world than fresh water, using reverse osmosis filtration is an effective means to get around the

There are many methods of desalination, however research shows that the most popular method is called multi-stage flash distillation (MSF), which accounted for 84% of desalination as of 2004 (Heimbuch, “How Desalination Works”).Multi-stage flash distillation uses energy from heat to evaporate salt water, and separate the water from the salt. This method of desalination can be very energy intensive, but fortunately multi-stage distillation can utilize solar power, making it a more environmentally friendly method of desalination. Other methods of desalination include forward osmosis distillation, reverse osmosis distillation, and low temperature thermal desalination (LTTD). The global need for more water in combination with emerging methods such as multi-stage flash distillation that utilize solar power, has the potential to evolve into a worldwide progression towards more environmentally friendly ways of

When nature limits our accessibility to water by droughts, we face no other choice but to turn toward the oceans for water. In that case we have to desalinate ocean water in order to purify it. The two most commonly known methods for desalination used around the world are Reverse Osmosis and Vapor Compression Desalination. We may take these two advancements in technology for granted in our daily lives and overuse the constantly flowing water. We need to take into consideration the amount of energy and effort required to purify water using these two processes. As the population grows in the drought areas the need for producing desalinated water is also going to increase, as

Water desalination processes separate dissolved salts and other minerals from water. Feed water sources may include brackish, seawater, wells, surface (rivers and streams), wastewater, and industrial feed and process waters. Membrane separation requires driving forces including pressure (applied and vapor), electric potential, and concentration to overcome natural osmotic pressures and effectively force water through membrane processes. As such, the technology is energy intensive and research is continually evolving to improve efficiency and reduce energy consumption.

Freshwater is the most essential renewable resource for life, food production and industrial development. It is expected in the future soon the clean water resources will be deducted by one-third. The difficulty to purify water and the high cost to transport aggravates the problem of water deficits. Therefore, the exploitation of seawater and brackish-water desalination has drawn unprecedented attention. Desalination is a possibility choice to produce drinking water from Saline water, although most desalination processes are energy-consuming and expensive. The main desalination technologies currently used are reverse osmosis, electrodialysis, and distillation. A drawback of the conventional desalination technologies is the intensive consumption of energy. Whereas, energy consumption has increased with an enormous trend In the last decades. Fossil fuels are a common type of non-renewable which include a huge portion of energy consumption. Despite of being nonrenewable, fossil fuels also negatively affect the human life by the emission of carbon dioxide. This limitation turn energy crisis eyes into renewable energy sources such as solar energy or energy produced from wind and water. As a result, one of the lately suggested alternative energy sources is fuel cell (FC). FC has several advantages over other types of energy generators such as zero pollution and higher efficiency.

All major desalination plants in Australia incorporate energy recovery devices to minimize overall energy requirements. Also, a worldwide research and development effort is currently devoted to reducing the energy consumption of desalination processes. A report by CSIRO and WSAA has identified that the energy demand profile for water supplies was influenced by the uptake of desalination in Australian cities. “In South East Queensland, desalinated and recycled water made up around 10% of the water supplied in 2009/10. The treatment energy for these rainfall independent water sources made up more than 40% of the total energy for water supply treatment and pumping.”(Cook, Hall & Gregory

Given that the ocean holds 97.2% of Earth’s near-surface water, desalinization of seawater is the first option that comes to my mind that could be viable. Especially in arid and semi-arid areas including the Middle East, Persian Gulf, North Africa, Caribbean islands and etc., seawater desalination facilities can be “vital for economic development.” It can provide reliable and high-quality water supply to hot, dry, and increasingly populous regions and allow for local control of water resources at the same time. San Diego County is one of these regions, where county government decided to build a massive desalination facility that will be using the reverse osmosis with a cost of $1 billion. When it’s done, it is expected to produce 54 million

Mohamed, K. (2009).Environmental impact of desalination plants on the environment. Thirteenth International Water Technology Conference, 951-964.

Desalination is the process that removes minerals from saline water. Desalination of water is more costly than collecting freshwater from rivers or groundwater. Nevertheless, these sources are not always available and the depletion of these sources is a worldwide problem. According to Global Water Intel, "Currently, approximately 1% of the world 's population is dependent on desalinated water to meet daily needs, but the UN expects that 14% of the world 's population will encounter water scarcity by 2025." This shows that desalination will have a huge demand and impact on human life in the near future. There are many key issues when it comes to desalination. These issues include cost, methods used, and environmental issues.

Desalination is the removal of salt from seawater to provide freshwater especially in developing countries. Currently, MFCs (Microbial Fuel Cells) have generated electricity from biomass using bacteria. These microbes cause an electric current where electrons flow from the anode to the cathode where the reduction of oxygen occurs. A revolutionary new method called MDCs (Microbial Desalination Cells) could potentially desalinate water and produce energy depending on the design or set up of the cell. This process is similar to water electrodialysis but uses bacteria as the source of energy rather than an external source.

Earth is covered in 72 percent water, but the majority of it is sea water. Thus it is too salty and harmful to consume. Given that salt unbalances the natural flow of substances in and out of cells. The salt causes the water present in the cell to flow out, resulting in dehydration. The technique used to remove the salt from the seawater and obtain fresh water is Desalination.

To solve water scarcity problem in the world, new technologies will be developed to decrease the cost of fresh water production and increase efficiency. In thermal desalination field, first with respect to the use of low-grade waste heat, various configurations of thermal desalination are investigated numerically. The new designs are compared with multi-effect distillation (MED) and recently proposed advanced MED schemes, namely boosted MED (BMED) and flash boosted MED (FBMED) on the basis of waste heat performance ratio, normalised pumping power consumption (NPPC) and specific capital cost. Afterwards, in phase two of research, for freezing desalination which has lower energy consumption compared to thermal desalination, fluidised bed implementation is investigated numerically, to solve the current problem in the commercialisation of this technology. In phase three, the feasibility of the multi-stream heat exchangers to effectively harness low-grade “waste heat” in the temperature range 65 °C – 90 °C is investigated. In phase four, with respect to previous experiences in design and commissioning of MED-TVC desalination, MED-TVC process will be simulated and validated by experimental data of a real desalination plant to improve the efficiency of current MED-TVC desalination plants. Finally, in the last stage of this research, for desalination technology without phase change, the