Data Center Helps Desalination in California

Published on by in Business

Data Center Helps Desalination in California

Pairing a Desalination Plant with a Data Center to Provide Fresh Water to Drought-stricken Monterey County

The seriousness of the current drought in California was evident during a recentvisit to the Salinas Valley. In fact, it's believed that ocean water is seeping into the coastal fresh-water aquifers.

Desalinationis a working technology used throughout the world to combat the shortage of fresh water. If it works, why aren't there more desalination plants dotting the California coastline? Because desalination plants are expensive, use an inordinate amount of electricity, and are fraught with environmental concerns.

DeepWater Desal

DeepWater Desalhas spent three years looking at the challenges overshadowing desalination plants, and the company believes it has viable answers for every concern. However, the solution is only feasible if the desalination plant is located near Monterey Bay, and the plant partners up with a large data center.

Let's break down each challenge, and then look at what DeepWater Desal proposes as a solution.

Desalination plants are expensive: Water agencies in Monterey County need more fresh water to meet demands, though none of the agencies are large enough to build a desalination plant on its own. To leverage the scale of a larger, more efficient plant, the water agencies came together to form theJoint Powers Authority. Sharing ownership makes the desalination plant affordable for even the smaller agencies.

Desalination plants need large amounts of electricity: Reverse osmosis, the desalination process, forces high-pressure ocean water through a membrane to remove the impurities; this process requires huge amounts of electricity. DeepWater Desal's answer is to create a new municipal utility that can buy electricity at wholesale prices. On its website, DeepWater Desal states:

How much water?

The estimated output of the plant each year will be 25,000 acre-feet (8,146,285,800 gallons) of potable water. Member agencies will receive water from the desalination plant as far north as Santa Cruz, as far east as Salinas, and as far south as the Monterey Peninsula.

To get an idea of the scope of the project: per annum worldwide, desalination plants convert 1.7 billion acre feet of ocean water into fresh, drinkable water.

Source: TechRepublic

Read More Related Content On This Topic - Click Here

Media

Taxonomy