Jellyfish-Fightin’ Desalination Plant

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Jellyfish-Fightin’ Desalination Plant

World's Largest Solar Powered, Jellyfish-Fightin' Desalination Plant To Be Built In Saudi Arabia

If Saudi Arabia and solar power don't look quite right together, it's time to shake off that 1970s oil crisis dust and take a look at the country's recent forays into renewable energy. The latest move is a solar powered desalination plant aimed at treating 60,000 square meters of seawater daily for the northeastern city of Al Khafji. According to the developer, this will be the world's first utility scale, solar powered desalination plant.

We were just talking about the potential for Saudi Arabia to export itssolar technologylast summer, as the solar industry revs up in competition with the global market for diesel. The new desalination plant is more evidence that the country is serious about weaning itselfoff diesel fueldomestically as well.

Solar Powered Desalination

Seawater is becoming a critical resource as global freshwater supplies come under increasing stress, but conventional desalination is an expensive, energy-sucking process. Renewable energy offers a chance at lowering both costs and emissions, andrenewable-powered desalinationwas a hot topic at the 2013 World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.

Well, it looks like the future is here. Yesterday, the companyAbengoaannounced that it has been tapped to partner in the development of theAl Khafji desalination plantbyTAQNIA, Saudi Arabia's innovation investment agency, through its newly formed companyAdvanced Water Technology(AWT).

If Abengoa rings a bell, you might be thinking of the world's largest parabolic troughconcentrating solar system. That's just one among many high-profile renewable energy projects under the company's umbrella, so it looks like Saudi Arabia went to the A-list for this project.

According to AWT, the plant will have a 15 megawatt solar array using polycrystalline solar cells engineered by the research agencyKing Abdulaziz City Science and Technology.

Speaking of going to the top, Spain'sTriarenaalso lists the desalination plant among its projects. Energy efficiency goes hand in glove with renewable energy, so it looks like the system includes energy recovery, energy storage, and other efficiency systems to complement the solar array. Here's a video from Triarena that spells it all out:

The only question we have for now is, what are they going to do with all that brine?

As for the jellyfish, the population of the ubiquitous critters appears to beon the rise, so your first order of business in seawater desalination is to find an efficient way to keep them from gumming up your works.

The plant itself is already under construction and is scheduled to be up and running in early 2017.

Source: CleanTechnica

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