- Chris Baroniuk
- Technology Business Correspondent
Image source, Getty Images
The UN says there are water-scarce communities on every continent.
Surrounded by the sea, the earth is rich in water. Unfortunately only 2.5% of it is fresh water. Demand for drinking water is projected to touch trillion cubic meters by 2030.
Seawater desalination plants can help distribute as much water as needed.
However, producing drinking water by this method is considered to be more expensive.
Ships with brackish water treatment plants may be the solution.
Will nuclear reactors be the solution?
These ships, which are powered by nuclear reactors, can go to drought-affected islands or coastal areas and bring both clean drinking water and electricity.
“This allows them to go uninterrupted and fill the tanks with water,” said Mickel Poe, CEO of Core Power, which designed the plant.
The plan may not seem feasible, but the U.S. Navy has in the past provided services during such disasters through such reactors. Moreover, Russia has already designed such floating nuclear reactors.
There are about 20,000 brackish water treatment plants operating worldwide, most of which are located along the coast. Most of these plants are located in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, the United Kingdom, China, the United States, Brazil, South Africa and Australia.
However, some engineers claim that such technology will reduce the cost of operating offshore, rather than offshore, and that they could easily absorb seawater and pay for shipping.
Image source, CORE POWER
Engineers have been dreaming for decades of designing such plants to be powered by nuclear reactors floating in the ocean.
For this, Core Power prefers to use small cargo ships. However, containers with brackish water desalination technology are stacked on the ship. The reactor at the center of the ship is designed to operate. This reactor supplies much of the electricity needed.
Plants with such reactors can have different levels of power generation, ranging from 5 megawatts to 70 megawatts, Boe says. Five megawatts of electricity can discharge 35,000 cubic meters of water or 14 Olympic swimming pools of fresh water daily.
This technology pushes seawater through pressure through a partially permeable membrane to expel salt from the brine. In this osmosis system, the minerals in the water are removed by the movement of the liquid molecules, and the salt in the brackish water is removed and fresh water is obtained.
This technology exists in different forms. The efficiency of this technology has increased over the years. But, floating mills are rare.
One of the three plants is currently being purchased by Saudi Arabia, the largest of its kind. If so, will such floating plants come into use?
Image source, Getty Images
Oisann Engineering, the company that designed the water fountain technology, believes this.
The company designs everything from large ships to small floats. But it’s all based on the same philosophy, explains the company’s CEO Gayle Hopkins.
The big difference is that all of this is operated by decades-old underwater seawater desalination technology, not by nuclear reactor electricity.
“This technology has never been commercialized because more submarine pipes are needed to carry water to the surface,” Hopkins said. “We do not use pipes in water fountain technology,” he says. He added that the technology as a whole uses high pressure in the ocean to discharge water without expending too much energy.
The pipeline from the ship to the shore, where the freshwater will eventually go, will be further facilitated by the force of gravity. He also points out that this will reduce the need for more energy.
Plants powered by this technology will be 30 percent more energy efficient than conventional plants, Hopkins says. The company is currently in the process of developing a small prototype of this plant design. The company hopes to set up the plant in the Philippines by 2023.
Image source, WATER FOUNTAIN
Raya Al-Tata, head of the Sustainable Energy Technology Laboratory at the University of Birmingham, says such ideas, including Core Power’s plant design, are “credible”. However, he says such floating mills have both weights and drawbacks. There are still challenges in bringing desalinated water to shore and finding suitable personnel for this technology.
While the world is experiencing the effects of climate change and experiencing temperatures in excess of 1.5 degrees Celsius, Alp-Tata says humans will eventually need water resources, saying “climate change will have catastrophic effects on water resources.”
Amy Sildrus of the University of Southern California says small floating plants could help reduce the ecological impact of such technology. Highly saline water, removed from brackish water, is toxic to marine life. The technology used today produces more of such toxic water than freshwater.
Hopkins says water released by water fountain technology will not be too salty.