Chinese desalination plant makes fresh water cheaper than tap water – plus green hydrogen

Holy grail! Desalination is salvation!

Strange both, Google and Bing search find only two news stories (and both are the same) about this important news item! One of the two articles is clearly awful spam and should not even have been retrieved as a top search result and it appears to reference the other article.

"China has launched a revolutionary facility in the eastern province of Shandong that produces fresh water from seawater for just two yuan (US$0.28) per cubic metre, generating green hydrogen as a by-product in a breakthrough that could redefine global water and energy systems."

Bing search result (based on SCMP article):

"The Shandong desalination plant in Rizhao is a groundbreaking facility that produces fresh water from seawater at a cost of just two yuan per cubic metre. This facility generates green hydrogen as a by-product and operates entirely using seawater and low-grade waste heat from nearby steel and petrochemical plants. It has achieved a "one-in, three-out" circular economy, producing 450 cubic metres of ultra-pure fresh water, 192,000 standard cubic metres of green hydrogen, and 350 tonnes of mineral-rich brine for marine chemical production. The facility's energy requirement is relatively low at roughly 4.2 kilowatt-hours per cubic metre of hydrogen produced, contributing to its economic viability and the case for replicating similar models in coastal or water-stressed regions."

Chinese desalination plant makes fresh water cheaper than tap water – plus green hydrogen | South China Morning Post "Facility in Shandong province also produces mineral-rich brine for industrial use, achieving ‘one-in, three-out’ circular economy"

'Key breakthrough' | Novel Chinese electrolyser produces hydrogen directly from seawater for 500 hours (behind paywall) "The pilot 110kW system eliminates the need for water desalination, while apparently producing H2 at similar efficiencies to conventional electrolysers"

Chinese desalination breakthrough produces cheap water and green hydrogen together (this article is also based on the above SCMP article)

Israel Pumps Desalinated Water Into Depleted Sea of Galilee

Good news! Desalination is salvation!

"The Water Authority has started channeling desalinated water to the Sea of Galilee, marking the first ever attempt anywhere in the world to top up a freshwater lake with processed seawater. ..."

Israel Pumps Desalinated Water Into Depleted Sea of Galilee - Human Progress

In world first, Israel begins pumping desalinated water into depleted Sea of Galilee "Groundbreaking project channeling in enough water to raise dangerously low lake level by 0.5 centimeters per month; Water Authority will double flow if needed"

Subsea desalination to boost California's drinking water supply by 2030

Good news! Desalination is salvation!

"Dozens of water-harvesting pods are set to be deployed along the sea floor off the coast of California as the United States ramps up its first subsea desalination project. The effort is expected to produce 60 million gallons (227 million liters) of fresh water per day. ..."

"OceanWell, a water technology company, announced plans to advance Water Farm 1 (WF1)– the first subsea reverse osmosis desalination project in the U.S. -- in partnership with Las Virgenes Municipal Water District (LVMWD) and a consortium of six other California water agencies. The project is expected to deliver up to 60 million gallons per day (MGD), or just under 230,000 m3 per day, of drinking water by 2030 – offering a new model for reliable, drought-resilient water supply.

Anchored approximately 4.5 miles off the coast of Malibu, CA, in Santa Monica Bay, WF1 represents a major leap forward in resilient water supply. Using natural hydrostatic pressure at depths of 400 meters (1,300 feet), OceanWell's modular pods can each harvest up to one million gallons of fresh water daily, reducing energy use by 40% and avoiding the brine discharge and marine life disruption associated with traditional desalination. ..."

Subsea desalination to boost California's water supply

OceanWell and Las Virgenes Municipal Water District Launch California Water Farm 1 with Capacity of 60 Million Gallons Per Day as Six Agencies Join Project (original news release)

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals and could save billions of dollars globally

Good news! Desalination is salvation!

"Water desalination plants could replace expensive chemicals with new carbon cloth electrodes that remove boron from seawater, an important step of turning seawater into safe drinking water. ..."

From the abstract:

"Selective removal of trace contaminants from water remains a crucial challenge in water treatment. Boron is a trace contaminant that is ubiquitous in seawater and has been widely detected in groundwater.

Current boron removal methods, such as multi-stage reverse osmosis and ion-exchange adsorption, are chemical and energy intensive, necessitating the development of more sustainable technologies.

Here we address this challenge by developing surface functionalized microporous electrodes that enable boron-selective bipolar membrane-assisted electrosorption.

Our study demonstrates that micropore functionalization with oxygen-containing (hydroxyl, lactone and carboxyl) and boron-selective (dopamine, 3-methylamino-1,2-propanediol and N-methyl-d-glucamine) functional groups substantially improves electrode performance for boron removal and selectivity.

The functionalized electrodes exhibit a boron removal selectivity that is an order of magnitude higher than that of the pristine electrode, facilitating energy efficient boron electrosorption.

We identify hydroxyl groups as the key factor in enhancing boron removal performance and selectivity during electrosorption.

Molecular dynamics simulations demonstrate the underlying mechanisms of boron selectivity, highlighting the role of hydrogen bonding between hydroxyl groups and boron in governing the boron-selective electrosorption process."

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals (original news release) "Cutting acid and base treatments from conventional desalination plants could save billions of dollars globally, making seawater a more affordable option for drinking water"

A highly selective and energy efficient approach to boron removal overcomes the Achilles heel of seawater desalination (no public access)

This diagram shows how boron is removed by the researchers’ electrodes.

First a majority of the salt ions are removed with reverse osmosis.

Then the water flows into a cell containing a membrane with positive (pink) and negative (orange) layers. Similarly charged electrodes face the membrane layers, and when a current is applied, water molecules at the interface of the membranes split into hydrogen and hydroxide ions. The hydroxide ions stick to boron, causing it to stick to the positive electrode.

Two more, new desalination plant projects around the world

Bravo! Desalination is salvation!

Namibia initiates construction of second desalination plant amid severe century-long drought

SUEZ wins €508 million contract for Taiwan's large-scale municipal seawater desalination plant

Credits: Human Progress Weekly Progress Roundup

Spanish company Acciona starts work on Africa’s biggest desalination plant in Morocco

Good news! Desalination is salvation! A new love story made in Casablanca (without Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman)

"The $650m public-private partnership scheme sees the first phase producing 200 million cubic metres of drinking water a year from 2026, rising to 300 million later.

That would be enough to serve 7.5 million inhabitants of one of the world’s most water-insecure countries. ...

The plant will run entirely on wind energy. Acciona has signed a power purchase agreement with a Moroccan renewable energy producer. ..."

Acciona starts work on Africa’s biggest desalination plant - Global Construction Review A consortium led by Spanish contractor Acciona has broken ground in Morocco on what will be Africa’s largest desalination plant at Lamharza Essahel, about 40km south of Casablanca.

Credits: Human Progress Weekly Progress Roundup

How Solar-Powered Desalination Allows Saudi Arabia To Produce Potable Water Sustainably – Analysis

Good news! Desalination is salvation!

"... In fact, desalination accounts for about 75 percent of the Kingdom’s water supply. ...

Each year, the Kingdom requires an average of 5.5 billion cubic meters of freshwater. The need for water is especially high during the Hajj and Umrah seasons, when well over a million pilgrims arrive from around the world.

Home to more than 37 million people, the Kingdom is the world’s third-largest consumer of water per head of population. Agriculture alone accounts for around 84 percent of total water consumption. ...

Al-Khafji Desalination Plant, located in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province, is the world’s largest solar-powered water desalination project, providing the region’s water requirements through an innovative and environmentally friendly approach.

The plant can generate up to 90,000 cubic meters of freshwater per day using innovative technology created by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology. 

Its new Solar Saline Water Reverse Osmosis method uses a process known as ultra-filtration during the pre-treatment phase."

How Solar-Powered Desalination Allows Saudi Arabia To Produce Potable Water Sustainably – Analysis – Eurasia Review

Alkhafji Desalination Plant Welcome to AlKhafji Desalination Plant, the world's largest solar-powered water desalination project that meets the region’s water needs in an innovative, sustainable way.

Source

New, electricity-free desalination method shows promise

Good news! The supply of potable water is probably one of the greatest challenges of our time! Desalination is salvation!

"Researchers from The Australian National University have proposed a new method for desalinating water that avoids many of the unwanted side effects of traditional desalinating techniques and that reduces the energy required by about 80%. ...

The new method published in Nature Communications relies not on electricity, but can use low-grade heat from sunlight, or heat that is a byproduct of an industrial process. It utilizes thermodiffusion, a phenomenon where salt transfers to the colder side of a smooth temperature change (temperature gradient) from hot to cold. The water remains in the liquid phase throughout. ..."

From the abstract:

"Desalination could solve the grand challenge of water scarcity, but materials-based and conventional thermal desalination methods generally suffer from scaling, fouling and materials degradation. Here, we propose and assess thermodiffusive desalination (TDD), a method that operates entirely in the liquid phase and notably excludes evaporation, freezing, membranes, or ion-adsorbing materials. Thermodiffusion is the migration of species under a temperature gradient and can be driven by thermal energy ubiquitous in the environment. Experimentally, a 450 ppm concentration drop was achieved by thermodiffusive separation when passing a NaCl/H2O solution through a single channel. This was further increased through re-circulation as a proof of concept for TDD. We also demonstrate via molecular dynamics and experiments that TDD in multi-component seawater is more amenable than in binary NaCl/H2O solutions. Numerically, we show that a scalable cascaded channel structure can further amplify thermodiffusive separation, achieving a concentration drop of 25000 ppm with a recovery rate of 10%. The minimum electric power consumption in this setup can be as low as 3 Whe m−3, which is only 1% of the theoretical minimum energy for desalination. TDD has potential in areas with abundant thermal energy but limited electrical power resources and can contribute to alleviating global freshwater scarcity."

New, electricity-free desalination method shows promise

Thermodiffusive desalination (open access)

Fig. 1: Concept of thermodiffusive desalination and unit design

Greater access to clean water by desalination, thanks to a better membrane

Good news! Desalination is salvation!

"... With an innovative material design, the Yale and Nanjing researchers have developed a reverse osmosis membrane that not only desalinates water but is also resistant to chlorine as well as fouling. Rather than using the industry gold standard of polyamide to develop these membranes, the researchers instead used polyester.  The choice of material is critical, as this polyester membrane allows for substantial water permeability, has a high rejection for sodium chloride and boron, and a complete resistance toward chlorine. The ultrasmooth, low-energy surface of the membrane also outdoes polyamide membranes in preventing fouling and mineral scaling.

Further, the team designed the membranes so that they could be easily adopted by the industry. ..."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

Reverse osmosis membranes have been dominated by polyamide chemistry, which has sufficient performance in terms of water permeability and salt rejection but is vulnerable to degradation in the presence of chlorine or other strong oxidants. Polyesters are not typically used for water filtration membranes because they suffer from hydrolytic degradation when immersed in aqueous solution. Yao et al. show that the polymerization of 3,5-dihydroxy-4-methylbenzoic acid with trimesoyl chloride yields a polymer membrane with impressive resistance to hydrolytic degradation in acidic or basic conditions (up to pH 9) and a complete resistance to chlorine. ...

Abstract

Thin-film composite reverse osmosis membranes have remained the gold standard technology for desalination and water purification for nearly half a century. Polyamide films offer excellent water permeability and salt rejection but also suffer from poor chlorine resistance, high fouling propensity, and low boron rejection. We addressed these issues by molecularly designing a polyester thin-film composite reverse osmosis membrane using co-solvent–assisted interfacial polymerization to react 3,5-dihydroxy-4-methylbenzoic acid with trimesoyl chloride. This polyester membrane exhibits substantial water permeability, high rejection for sodium chloride and boron, and complete resistance toward chlorine. The ultrasmooth, low-energy surface of the membrane also prevents fouling and mineral scaling compared with polyamide membranes. These membranes could increasingly challenge polyamide membranes by further optimizing water-salt selectivity, offering a path to considerably reducing pretreatment steps in desalination."

Greater access to clean water, thanks to a better membrane | Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science

More resilient polyester membranes for high-performance reverse osmosis desalination (no public access)

Desalination Can Beat Out Batteries for Excess Energy

This is an interesting proposal! Food for thought!

Desalination might be one of the best uses of solar power!

"In many arid regions around the world, desalination of saltwater is an important means to acquire drinking water. One of the most common desalination techniques is through a process called reverse osmosis. However, the pumps used for reverse osmosis desalination require immense amounts of electricity—which raises questions on how to ensure this process is completed in an economical and energy-efficient way. ...
In some situations, it may even be more financially and energy efficient to put that generated energy toward desalination rather than store it in batteries for use later. Money can be saved by only producing freshwater when renewable energy production is high. ..."

From the abstract:

"We consider a power system whose electric demand pertaining to freshwater production is high (high freshwater electric demand), as in the Middle East, and investigate the tradeoff of storing freshwater in tanks versus storing electricity in batteries at the day-ahead operation stage. Both storing freshwater and storing electricity increase the actual electric demand at valley hours and decrease it at peak hours, which is generally beneficial in term of cost and reliability. But, to what extent? We analyze this question considering three power systems with different generation-mix configurations, i.e., a thermal-dominated mix, and a renewable-dominated one, and a fully renewable one. These generation-mix configurations are inspired by how power systems may evolve in different countries in the Middle East. Renewable production uncertainty is compactly modeled using chance constraints. We draw conclusions on how both storage facilities (freshwater and electricity) complement each other to render an optimal operation of the power system."

Desalination Can Beat Out Batteries for Excess Energy - IEEE Spectrum Producing water could be more efficient than storing energy for later

Storing freshwater versus storing electricity in power systems with high freshwater electric demand (open access)

Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water

Good news! Desalination is salvation! It does not have to be solar powered as in this case.

"Engineers at MIT and in China are aiming to turn seawater into drinking water with a completely passive device that is inspired by the ocean, and powered by the sun. ...

The configuration of the device allows water to circulate in swirling eddies, in a manner similar to the much larger “thermohaline” circulation of the ocean. This circulation, combined with the sun’s heat, drives water to evaporate, leaving salt behind. The resulting water vapor can then be condensed and collected as pure, drinkable water. In the meantime, the leftover salt continues to circulate through and out of the device, rather than accumulating and clogging the system. ...

The researchers estimate that if the system is scaled up to the size of a small suitcase, it could produce about 4 to 6 liters of drinking water per hour and last several years before requiring replacement parts. At this scale and performance, the system could produce drinking water at a rate and price that is cheaper than tap water. ..."

From the highlights and abstract:

"Highlights

• Thermohaline convection is initiated in confined-saline-layer evaporation

• Record-high efficiencies are achieved in the salinity range of 0–20 wt %

• 180-h continuous distillation of 20 wt % concentrated seawater is realized

Summary

Recent advances in multistage solar distillation are promising for the sustainable supply of freshwater. However, significant performance degradation due to salt accumulation has posed a challenge for both long-term reliability of solar desalination and efficient treatment of hypersaline discharge. Here, inspired by a natural phenomenon, thermohaline convection, we demonstrate a solar-powered multistage membrane distillation with extreme salt-resisting performance. Using a confined saline layer as an evaporator, we initiate strong thermohaline convection to mitigate salt accumulation and enhance heat transfer. With a ten-stage device, we achieve record-high solar-to-water efficiencies of 322%–121% in the salinity range of 0–20 wt % under one-sun illumination. More importantly, we demonstrate an extreme resistance to salt accumulation with 180-h continuous desalination of 20 wt % concentrated seawater. With high freshwater production and extreme salt endurance, our device significantly reduces the water production cost, paving a pathway toward the practical adoption of passive solar desalination for sustainable water economy."

Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT engineers and collaborators developed a solar-powered device that avoids salt-clogging issues of other designs.

Extreme salt-resisting multistage solar distillation with thermohaline convection (no public access)

Graphical abstract:

Three states near deal on Colorado River water after decades of drought and overuse

Would not desalination be a solution? Oh, yes! The dependency on this one river is ridiculous!

Don't wait, desalinate: A new approach to water purification

Good news! Desalination is salvation! Desalination is without doubt another one of the most important research areas for humanity!

"... To save energy, the researchers streamlined the salt separation process with a chemical phenomenon called a redox reaction. The word redox is a portmanteau of the words reduction (which, in chemistry, describes adding electrons to create a negative charge) and oxidation (which means subtracting electrons to create a positive charge). Physically, triggering a redox reaction looks like adding a special polymer-based material to the wastewater before it’s filtered and purified.
Chemically, the results are transformative. Instead of splitting water molecules into positively and negatively charged slices to coax out the salt, the redox reaction changes the charge of the entire water molecule in one fell swoop, achieving the same degree of salty separation with about 90% less energy than traditional water-splitting. ..."

"... electrodialysis. Just like dialysis of the blood, which, kidney-like, flushes salt and other toxins from our veins, electrodialysis removes salts and organic matter from wastewater to produce a clean, drinkable product. ..."

From the abstract:

"Robust, energy-efficient separation technologies for desalination and the removal of organic contaminants are critical in addressing growing concerns about water shortage and water pollution. Here, we propose a generalized strategy for advancing electrodialysis technologies using redox-flow concepts, by implementing a water-soluble redox-copolymer, poly(ferrocenylpropylmethacrylamide-co-[2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl]trimethylammonium chloride), P(FPMAm-co-METAC), to eliminate the need for anion-exchange membranes (AEMs) and deploy cheaper and more robust nanofiltration membranes (NFs). The effective membrane retention of the redox material and stable redox activity facilitate the continuous desalination of various source waters, including brackish water, seawater, and wastewater, to produce potable water and remove organic contaminants without membrane fouling or polymer crossover. Leveraging the reversible redox reaction of ferrocene reduces energy consumption by 88% within a single-unit cell compared to conventional ED. In addition, utilizing reusable redox-copolymer and cost-effective NFs promotes economic feasibility, achieving a water production cost of $0.13 m–3. Overall, the combination of redox-copolymer in flow and NFs provides a new avenue to address water contamination caused by organic pollutants and water scarcity in an energy efficient manner."

Don't wait, desalinate: A new approach to water purification

Don’t wait, desalinate: the electrified future of clean water (primary news source) A water purification system developed by Beckman researchers separates out salt and other unnecessary particles with an electrified version of dialysis. Successfully applied to wastewater with planned expansion into rivers and seas, the method saves money and saps 90% less energy than its counterparts.

Redox-Copolymers for Nanofiltration-Enabled Electrodialysis (no public access)

Upending a decades-long theory of reverse osmosis water desalination

Good news! Desalination is salvation!

Scientists are all too human! They fail like everyone else!

"... Now a team of researchers reveal in a new study that the standard explanation for how reverse osmosis works — one that has been accepted for more than five decades — is fundamentally wrong. In the process, the researchers offer an alternate theory. Besides correcting the record, these insights could lead to more effective uses of reverse osmosis. ..."

From the abstract:

"We performed nonequilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulations and solvent permeation experiments to unravel the mechanism of water transport in reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. The NEMD simulations reveal that water transport is driven by a pressure gradient within the membranes, not by a water concentration gradient, in marked contrast to the classic solution-diffusion model. We further show that water molecules travel as clusters through a network of pores that are transiently connected. Permeation experiments with water and organic solvents using polyamide and cellulose triacetate RO membranes showed that solvent permeance depends on the membrane pore size, kinetic diameter of solvent molecules, and solvent viscosity. This observation is not consistent with the solution-diffusion model, where permeance depends on the solvent solubility. Motivated by these observations, we demonstrate that the solution-friction model, in which transport is driven by a pressure gradient, can describe water and solvent transport in RO membranes."

Upending a decades-long theory of reverse osmosis water desalination | Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science

Water transport in reverse osmosis membranes is governed by pore flow, not a solution-diffusion mechanism (open access)

Fig. 1. MD simulation of water transport through a polyamide membrane

Splitting seawater could provide an endless source of green hydrogen. Really!

When the American Association for the Advancement of Science propagates propaganda and demagoguery!

No doubt seawater splitting into hydrogen has great potential! But to sell it as panacea is dubious!

How green? This may very well be largely wishful thinking or worse!

I have recently blogged here my critical opinion about hydrogen and water! And they like us to forget about the Hindenburg disaster! Here is another of my blog posts about seawater splitting.

"Few climate solutions come without downsides. “Green” hydrogen, made by using renewable energy to split water molecules, could power heavy vehicles and decarbonize industries such as steelmaking without spewing a whiff of carbon dioxide [???]. ..."

From the abstract (notice that this abstract of a scientific research paper is full of ideological terms]:

"Electrochemical saline water electrolysis using renewable energy as input is a highly desirable [???] and sustainable method for the mass production of green [???] hydrogen; however, its practical viability is seriously challenged by insufficient durability because of the electrode side reactions and corrosion issues arising from the complex components of seawater. Although catalyst engineering using polyanion coatings to suppress corrosion by chloride ions or creating highly selective electrocatalysts has been extensively exploited with modest success, it is still far from satisfactory for practical applications. Indirect seawater splitting by using a pre-desalination process can avoid side-reaction and corrosion problems, but it requires additional energy input, making it economically less attractive. In addition, the independent bulky desalination system makes seawater electrolysis systems less flexible in terms of size. Here we propose a direct seawater electrolysis method for hydrogen production that radically addresses the side-reaction and corrosion problems. A demonstration system was stably operated at a current density of 250 milliamperes per square centimetre for over 3,200 hours under practical application conditions without failure. This strategy realizes efficient, size-flexible and scalable direct seawater electrolysis in a way similar to freshwater splitting without a notable increase in operation cost, and has high potential for practical application. Importantly, this configuration and mechanism promises further applications in simultaneous water-based effluent treatment and resource recovery and hydrogen generation in one step."

Splitting seawater could provide an endless source of green hydrogen | Science | AAAS Chemists improve electrolyzers to withstand saltwater corrosion

A membrane-based seawater electrolyser for hydrogen generation (no public access)

"Exceptional" new catalyst cheaply splits hydrogen from seawater

Good news! We are apparently making noticeable progress on splitting water into hydrogen and on desalination!

"... Today [2/13/2023], scientists at Australia's RMIT announced another approach with great potential for highly efficient, low-cost green hydrogen generation straight from seawater, without generating chlorine. ..."

From the abstract:

"Hydrogen is emerging as an alternative clean fuel; however, its dependency on freshwater will be a threat to a sustainable environment. Seawater, an unlimited source, can be an alternative, but its salt-rich nature causes corrosion and introduces several competing reactions, hindering its use. To overcome these, a unique catalyst composed of porous sheets of nitrogen-doped NiMo3P (N-NiMo3P) having a sheet size of several microns is designed. The presence of large homogenous pores in the basal plane of these sheets makes them catalytically more active and ensures faster mass transfer. The introduction of N and Ni into MoP significantly tunes the electronic density of Mo, surface chemistry, and metal-non-metal bond lengths, optimizing surface energies, creating new active sites, and increasing electrical conductivity. The presence of metal-nitrogen bonds and surface polyanions increases the stability and improves anti-corrosive properties against chlorine chemistry. Ultimately, the N-NiMo3P sheets show remarkable performance as it only requires overpotentials of 23 and 35 mV for hydrogen evolution reaction, and it catalyzes full water splitting at 1.52 and 1.55 V to achieve 10 mA cm−2 in 1 m KOH and seawater, respectively. Hence, structural and compositional control can make catalysts effective in realizing low-cost hydrogen directly from seawater."

"Exceptional" new catalyst cheaply splits hydrogen from seawater

Scientists make hydrogen straight from seawater The process saves a lot of energy and money normally spent on desalination.

How to make hydrogen straight from seawater – no desalination required (press release) Researchers have developed a cheaper and more energy-efficient way to make hydrogen directly from seawater, in a critical step towards a truly viable green hydrogen industry.

Nitrogen-Doped Porous Nickel Molybdenum Phosphide Sheets for Efficient Seawater Splitting (open access)

Left to right: Dr. Muhammad Waqas Khan, Dr. Nasir Mahmood and Mr Suraj Loomba, part of the RMIT team working on this advance (A very politically incorrect photograph, no female or colored researcher? Just kidding! 😊)

Illustration of the synthesis of porous N-NiMo3P and the electrochemical seawater splitting process. The porous sheets of N-NiMo3P, owing to its large surface area with abundant active sites and pores, lead to better mass transport providing exceptional electrochemical performance in a seawater electrolyte. Note: the ball stick model is presenting the fundamental structure of oxide and phosphide not the surface chemistry of the sheet.

Egypt to build 21 desalination plants

Good news! Desalination is salvation! Human ingenuity!

Israel's five main desalination plants are now in private hands

Good news! We need a lot more desalination plants!

Generation Capital, Shapir complete Ashdod desalination plant buy - Globes The buyers plan to renovate the plant and construct a power plant on site. Israel's five main desalination plants are now in private hands.

Arizona Needs to Cut 300,000 Olympic Pools’ Worth of Water in 2023

Lot's of dry swimming pools next summer? 

Just a reminder: Desalination is salvation! Why don't we make more progress on this front?

"Arizona farms are first in line to bear the brunt of the biggest restrictions put in place on the use of the Colorado River’s water after officials declared an unprecedented shortage last week.

Lake Mead reached its lowest water level since the 1930s in July, and low levels are projected to continue into 2023, prompting officials at the Bureau of Reclamation to drastically reduce Arizona’s consumption of the river’s water. Last year, the river’s already low levels resulted in Arizona getting 512,000 acre-feet less water in 2022. Even drier conditions this year led to a cut of 592,000 acre-feet in 2023, or 21% of its annually allocated Colorado River water. Nevada and Mexico are also subject to the restrictions, reducing their supply by 8% and 7%, ..."

Arizona Needs to Cut 300,000 Olympic Pools’ Worth of Water. Here Is Who Will Be Hit the Hardest. - WSJ How the Colorado River’s water is doled out depends on customers’ priority set forth in previously agreed-upon contracts

Portable desalination unit that generates clear, clean drinking water without the need for filters or high-pressure pumps

Good news! However, the throughput of this new device at about 0.3L per hour leaves something to be desired.

Sufficient and reliable potable water supply going forward is probably one of the biggest real challenges of humanity! Human ingenuity can handle it!

However, this new system needs no filters or high pressure pumps. It also clears dirty water. I wonder whether this new system can be scaled to filter thousands of liters of sea water.

"... The suitcase-sized device, which requires less power to operate than a cell phone charger, can also be driven by a small, portable solar panel, which can be purchased online for around $50. It automatically generates drinking water that exceeds World Health Organization quality standards. The technology is packaged into a user-friendly device that runs with the push of one button. ...

Instead, their unit relies on a technique called ion concentration polarization (ICP) ... Rather than filtering water, the ICP process applies an electrical field to membranes placed above and below a channel of water. The membranes repel positively or negatively charged particles — including salt molecules, bacteria, and viruses — as they flow past. The charged particles are funneled into a second stream of water that is eventually discharged.

The process removes both dissolved and suspended solids, allowing clean water to pass through the channel. Since it only requires a low-pressure pump, ICP uses less energy than other techniques.

But ICP does not always remove all the salts floating in the middle of the channel. So the researchers incorporated a second process, known as electrodialysis, to remove remaining salt ions. ..."

From the abstract:

"A portable seawater desalination system would be highly desirable to solve water challenges in rural areas and disaster situations. While many reverse osmosis-based portable desalination systems are already available commercially, they are not adequate for providing reliable drinking water in remote locations due to the requirement of high-pressure pumping and repeated maintenance. We demonstrate a field-deployable desalination system with multistage electromembrane processes, composed of two-stage ion concentration polarization and one-stage electrodialysis, to convert brackish water and seawater to drinkable water. A data-driven predictive model is used to optimize the multistage configuration, and the model predictions show good agreement with the experimental results. The portable system desalinates brackish water and seawater (2.5–45 g/L) into drinkable water (defined by WHO guideline), with the energy consumptions of 0.4–4 (brackish water) and 15.6–26.6 W h/L (seawater), respectively. In addition, the process can also reduce suspended solids by at least a factor of 10 from the source water, resulting in crystal clear water (<1 NTU) even from the source water with turbidity higher than 30 NTU (i.e., cloudy seawater by the tide). We built a fully integrated prototype (controller, pumps, and battery) packaged into a portable unit (42 × 33.5 × 19 cm3, 9.25 kg, and 0.33 L/h production rate) controlled by a smartphone, tested for battery-powered field operation. The demonstrated portable desalination system is unprecedented in size, efficiency, and operational flexibility. Therefore, it could address unique water challenges in remote, resource-limited regions of the world."

From seawater to drinking water, with the push of a button | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Researchers build a portable desalination unit that generates clear, clean drinking water without the need for filters or high-pressure pumps.

Portable Seawater Desalination System for Generating Drinkable Water in Remote Locations (open access)