'The Pipe' - Artwork That Desalinates Water

'The Pipe' is a magnificent floating artwork that produces clean water using desalination, designed to help in California's struggle with droughts.

There is no reason for technology to be esthetically unappealing. The goal of the 2016 Land Art Generator Initiative design competition (LAGI) was to incorporate energy or drinking water solutions into art.

Their idea was to try to solve some of the biggest challenges of the modern world, especially in California considering the recent droughts, in an aesthetically appealing way.

One of the competitors is “The Pipe” in Santa Monica. It is a magnificent floating artwork that produces clean water using desalination.

The greatest thing about this installation is how it overcomes the biggest problems of desalination. Usually, it is a rather expensive process. A lot of energy is usually required for desalination and it is spent on:

• transporting the water to the plant,
• water treatment process itself (a lot of which goes on creating the pressure for reverse osmosis),
• distributing the water to the consumers,
• treatment of the residuals.

The Pipe uses electromagnetic desalination to treat the very seawater floating underneath it.

It is equipped with solar panels that pump the water through and generate the electricity which creates the magnetic field. The magnetic flux separates the dissolved solids from the seawater.
The result are two final products:

• clean drinking water
• clean water with the 12% salt concentration.

Drinking water is piped to the shore and the salt water is discharged back to the sea. The low salt concentration mitigates the effects of returning brine to the sea, compared to the other desalination release systems.

The Pipe is capable of generating 10,000 MWh each year, which will produce 4.5 billion liters of drinking water.

Considering the current California drought problems, and general water scarcity, these types of micro generators could be an extremely beneficial solution.

The winners of LAGI 2016 are to be announced on October 6, 2016 at Greenbuild 2016.

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Taxonomy

• Energy
• Desalination
• Art
• Solar Power
• Desalination
• Solar Cells