Megascale Desalination

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534996/megascale-desalination/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Megascale Desalination[/font]
[font size=4]The world’s largest and cheapest reverse-osmosis desalination plant is up and running in Israel.

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[font size=3]On a Mediterranean beach 10 miles south of Tel Aviv, Israel, a vast new industrial facility hums around the clock. It is the world’s largest modern seawater desalination plant, providing 20 percent of the water consumed by the country’s households. Built for the Israeli government by Israel Desalination Enterprises, or IDE Technologies, at a cost of around $500 million, it uses a conventional desalination technology called reverse osmosis (RO). Thanks to a series of engineering and materials advances, however, it produces clean water from the sea cheaply and at a scale never before achieved.

Worldwide, some 700 million people don’t have access to enough clean water. In 10 years the number is expected to explode to 1.8 billion. In many places, squeezing fresh water from the ocean might be the only viable way to increase the supply.

The new plant in Israel, called Sorek, was finished in late 2013 but is just now ramping up to its full capacity; it will produce 627,000 cubic meters of water daily, providing evidence that such large desalination facilities are practical. Indeed, desalinated seawater is now a mainstay of the Israeli water supply. Whereas in 2004 the country relied entirely on groundwater and rain, it now has four seawater desalination plants running; Sorek is the largest. Those plants account for 40 percent of Israel’s water supply. By 2016, when additional plants will be running, some 50 percent of the country’s water is expected to come from desalination.

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The Sorek plant incorporates a number of engineering improvements that make it more efficient than previous RO facilities. It is the first large desalination plant to use pressure tubes that are 16 inches in diameter rather than eight inches. The payoff is that it needs only a fourth as much piping and other hardware, slashing costs. The plant also has highly efficient pumps and energy recovery devices. “This is indeed the cheapest water from seawater desalination produced in the world,” says Raphael Semiat, a chemical engineer and desalination expert at the Israel Institute of Technology, or Technion, in Haifa. “We don’t have to fight over water, like we did in the past.” Australia, Singapore, and several countries in the Persian Gulf are already heavy users of seawater desalination, and California is also starting to embrace the technology (see “Desalination Out of Desperation”). Smaller-scale RO technologies that are energy-efficient and relatively cheap could also be deployed widely in regions with particularly acute water problems—even far from the sea, where brackish underground water could be tapped.

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[dumbcat]

1. Cheap?

What’s more, its energy consumption is among the lowest in the world for large-scale desalination plants.

I wish they would say what the energy consumption is. How many kW-hr per cubic meter?

The article says "However, Sorek will profitably sell water to the Israeli water authority for 58 U.S. cents per cubic meter ..." which would be about 5-10 kW-hr at typical US prices.

As usual, there is a lack of dollar signs ($) in the article. Other than the Capital cost of $500 million and the hint at an operation cost, it's hard to determine what "cheap" means.

But whatever, it's good to develop the technology.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Sorek operational update

http://www.desalination.com/wdr/51/4-5

…

In addition to its size and low water cost—initially NIS 2.19/m3 ($0.585/m3; $2.21/kgal)…

[dumbcat]

3. Yes, that was in the article

and I noted that. $0.58 per cubic meter. I also noted that that was the "price" that they were selling the water at, and thus the "cost" to the customers. As I am sure you are aware, cost and price are two different things, depending on where you are looking from. I would like a little more detail on the plant's costs, as in kW-hr per cubic meter, electricity costs, overhead costs, etc.

One of the other things in the article that interested me was the statement

The Sorek plant incorporates a number of engineering improvements that make it more efficient than previous RO facilities. It is the first large desalination plant to use pressure tubes that are 16 inches in diameter rather than eight inches. The payoff is that it needs only a fourth as much piping and other hardware, slashing costs. The plant also has highly efficient pumps and energy recovery devices. “This is indeed the cheapest water from seawater desalination produced in the world,” says Raphael Semiat, a chemical engineer and desalination expert at the Israel Institute of Technology, or Technion, in Haifa.

yet it also says

What’s more, its energy consumption is among the lowest in the world for large-scale desalination plants.

If it is among the lowest in the world, but not the lowest, why not? With all the new breakthroughs in technology and all the new efficiencies, why isn't it the lowest? I know energy consumption is only part of the cost, but it's the largest part.

I am probably being unreasonable wanting so much detail. The engineer in me wants more detail of the process than the plant owners probably want to give out, or that reporters are capable of reporting without errors. For me, knowing more of the operational and cost details (I also have a couple of MBAs) would make it easier to envision broader applications and maybe improved processes.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Ah, Engineers Offer to Save World From Engineers. (credit to gliderguider) :-)

Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/112781255#post4

The only possible outcome of deploying more desal plants will be the acceleration of our demise through more rapid use of fossil fuels and continued population growth and destruction of our natural systems.

Thanks for the link in your last paragraph. I was at the Poseidon Desalination plant in Carlsbad and it's neighbor the NRG nat gas plant to which it is connected back in December.

Article: "Severe droughts are forcing researchers to rethink how technology can increase the supply of fresh water."

Shame that they aren't looking at ways to conserve and reduce usage or halt population growth, these would be sustainable but somebody might take a hit in the pocketbook.

Ah well, the good that comes from it is less need to draw water from the North.