Silhouette
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- Jul 15, 2013
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- #21
That plant unfortunately uses reverse osmosis which as I understand is energetically expensive. And the points you just made make me suspect it is another pre-emptive slap at desalination (proxy for a slap at solar thermal alternative to reverse osmosis) because this project will prove out to be "too expensive to justify"...
...just like the shadow-backers of the failed Solyndra project designed it to fail on purpose...
...there is so much wile and craft and BS going on with big money monopolies that have looked into the future an seen all sorts of applications for solar thermal energy (a different way to de-salt ocean water at a fraction of the cost) that this San Diego project smells fishy.
RED FLAG and case in point from the article:
And the minute the numbers are out, you will see Big Energy screaming from the mountaintops how this is not a cost effective way to de-salt water...how it won't work for California.
But solar thermal will work.
Just one idea that isn't energetically expensive reverse osmosis..
SOLAR THERMAL DESALINATION USING THE MULTIPLE EFFECT HUMIDIFICATION (MEH)-METHOD Solar driven desalination systems based on evaporation of sea water and subsequent condensation of the generated steam have been investigated worldwide for many years. Starting from simple but sophisticated solar stills working very reliably and self sufficient on small scale drinking water production in the range up to 0.5 m per day, improved concepts have been realized mainly at a research level up to now.
The main tasks in term of efficiency of such concepts were the reduction of specific energy consumption and by that requested solar aperture area per cubic meter of water produced daily. One of the concepts is the Multiple Effect Humidification (MEH) method. The enclosure comprising heat and mass transfer is separated from the solar collectors for heat supply of the process. Evaporation and condensation surfaces are oriented to enable continuous temperature stratification along the heat and mass transfer process, resulting in small temperature gap to keep the process running.
Most of the energy afforded in the evaporator is regained in the condenser keeping the energy demand on a very low level of less than 120 kWh/m. Such systems have been available as an industrial product since November 2005. A demonstration system was installed and commissioned in Jeddah/Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia. SOLAR THERMAL DESALINATION Concentrating Solar Power Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector Linear Fresnel Systems
That's where Hollywood is also..
