Abu Dhabi Company Searches for Greener Method of Desalination
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Version 0 of 1. ABU DHABI — Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, is turning its attention to finding cost-effective ways to remove the salt from seawater, using renewable energy like solar power. There is a huge need for desalination in the Gulf, the world’s driest region and home to a rapidly growing population. In the desert lands of the Gulf and other parts of the Middle East, drinking water is mostly supplied from energy-intensive processes including chemical treatments, thermal distillation and filtration by reverse osmosis. These are all big energy consumers — and can burn up oil, the lifeblood of the region’s economy. Because of the steep up-front investments that they have so far required and the high cost per unit of power generated, renewable energy technologies have not been a popular option for producing potable water, in the Gulf or anywhere else. But advances in the technology and a steady decline in manufacturing costs for solar generating plants may be about to change that picture. “While conventional seawater desalination methods account for 75 percent of the Gulf’s demand for water, the process is energy intensive and costly,” Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive of Masdar, said during an interview. “Coupling renewable energy with the latest in desalination technologies is the logical next step, and it also provides an avenue to spur economic growth and address the region’s long-term water security.” With financial backing from Abu Dhabi’s investment arm Mubadala, Masdar says it plans to build three pilot plants in the next three to four years, sited in different areas of Abu Dhabi, to test innovative technologies and figure out if they have potential for large scale use. Part of the program will focus on a variant of semi-permeable membrane filtration technology known as forward osmosis, according to Masdar. Other innovative technologies to be tested will include electrodialysis deionization, membrane distillation and low-temperature distillation, while the program also aims to explore the potential for cost reductions and improvements in the energy intensity and efficiency of established technologies such as reverse osmosis. The program aims to bridge the gap between promising technologies which are being developed in universities and research centers, and large-scale industrial applications powered by renewable energy. The long-term goal of the initiative is to have a facility operating at commercial scale by 2020. Middle Eastern and North African countries are home to 6.3 percent of the world’s population, but the region contains only 1.4 percent of the world’s fresh water. The Gulf region in particular has the highest water scarcity levels in the world, according to the World Bank. With limited surface water and depleting ground water resources, desalination is the key to meeting the inexorable rise in demand for water resulting from economic growth and expanding populations. Already, more than half of all the world’s desalination capacity is located in the Arab countries. Yet, in the United Arab Emirates, to take just one example, seawater desalination requires about 10 times more energy than pumping water from wells. Costs are projected to increase by 300 percent between 2010 and 2016 according to Masdar’s estimates. The energy needed for desalination is usually generated by fossil fuels. The production of drinking water — often to be supplied at subsidized rates — uses 7 percent of global energy, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. So, in effect, large amounts of oil and gas are being used to generate cheap water supplies instead of earning export revenue. “The Middle East is still in the process of addressing its long-term sustainable water access and security,” Corrado Sommariva, president of the International Desalination Association, said this month at the International Water Summit in Abu Dhabi. “By bridging the gap between research and development and commercialization, Masdar can provide an opportunity for scale-up of technologies that address water access.” A handful of other projects in the region also have started to explore the use of renewable energy sources to produce drinking water, but they are costly, few in number and mostly still at the early testing stage. Last June, Eole Water, a French start-up founded in 2008, began field trials in Abu Dhabi of wind turbines designed to produce drinking water from the condensation of atmospheric humidity. The company says a turbine it has developed should be able to pull 1,000 liters of drinking water daily from thin air. The Abu Dhabi trial is intended to test the ability of the technology to stand up to the sandstorms and extreme heat of the harsh desert environment. Other small-scale renewable desalination initiatives in Saudi Arabia and Oman focus either on developing new desalination technologies, or on coupling renewable energy sources with conventional desalination plants. The Masdar project, in contrast, addresses both innovation in water desalination technologies and in renewable energy sources. “For renewable-powered desalination to work, it must be cost-competitive,” said Mr. Jaber of Masdar. “In our pilot program, we are looking for bankable, commercially viable technologies that can compete in the free market.” |