Power or Water? Why not both?

The issue on power and water represents a classic Catch-22: Desalination is becoming increasingly necessary because of drinking water scarcity, but the process gobbles down copious amounts of electricity, to be created by power plants that need water. Is there a way out of this cycle?

Veera Gnaneswar Gude, a professor and researcher at the Mississippi State University, thinks so. She suggests a side-by-side power and desalination plant as a solution to the foregoing conundrum. “There is mutual benefit for both in combining these two processes together,” she says, adding that she and her team have spent the last eight years devising a system that will make desalination-power generation partnership possible.

This is how the technique works: Instead of using water for cooling purposes, Gude’s technology incorporates a power plant refrigeration system that produces cold air. This systems is run by waste heat, which is already being produced in the power plant and, hence, does not require any outside energy sources. “The waste heat,” explains Gude, “can also be used to power a neighboring low-temperature desalination (LTD) plant.”

According to the team’s study, the partnership works because LTD is significantly less energy-intensive than conventional desalination plants. “LTD,” continues Gude, “separates the salt by condensing water at a lower pressure point and temperature than conventional systems. The LTD process does not require any mechanical pumping or cooling, which contributes in saving energy.”

To sum up, Gude highlights that LTD is useful for places that are in need of power but don’t have access to water. “It avoids using up a precious resource.”

Letting the technology develop

The technology that Gude and her team is proposing has the potential to hold water, as it attempts to resolve one of the most pressing problems of the world today: How can the world conserve water, when water is needed to produce potable water?

Having said this, it may be possible to see an exponential increase in the number of such installation, particularly in areas where water is scarce, but at the same time where electrification is crucial. It, however, can take years or decades, as developing and optimizing a technology is no mean feat. Add to it the external impositions of actually building the system, like securing funding, ascertaining an appropriate location, providing labor and obtaining approvals. Ten to twenty years of lead time may not at all be an exaggeration.

As technological development and market appreciation take their natural course, temporary power plants can provide the necessary power needed to produce safe drinking water anywhere in the world. Rental power stations are flexible, modular and cost-beneficial technologies that can be rapidly deployed from and to anywhere in the world. They are able to provide the exact amount of power needed by industrial processes, and are more cost-efficient, compared to building traditional power plants. Interim energy systems can offer the necessary power to produce potable water when future technologies, like the one proposed by Gude and her team, are still being enhanced. 

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PRESS INQUIRIES

Robert Bagatsing

Altaaqa Global

Tel: +971 56 1749505

rbagatsing@altaaqaglobal.com

How energy and water are intertwined

As the world’s population grows, the demand for both resources will continue to increase, and managing the two assets collectively will help maintain dependable and sustainable supplies of both water and energy for the coming generations.

Water and electricity are the foremost utilities we use at home or in the office. How many times have you experienced panicking because there was no water when you turned on the tap, or because the TV power indicator would not turn on? Easy access to water and energy has characterized the life of many of us in recent decades that living without them within possibly three decades is utterly unimaginable.

But, do you know that water and energy are, in fact, not all too separate? In fact utility industry players say that what affects water has a notable effect on power, and this is true even the other way around. A collective analysis of water and power has the potential to greatly help business, community, environmental and governmental stakeholders in trying to come up with the most sustainable solutions to the world’s escalating challenges in the maintenance of natural resources.

Water-energy nexus

According to studies, all types of electric power generation entail water, either in processing raw materials utilized in the energy facilities, constructing or maintaining power plants or in producing electricity. In reality, while renewable sources of energy, like solar and wind, use very little or no water in creating energy, water may be needed in developing raw materials used in building turbines and solar panels.

One of the methods of power generation that is observed to be highly dependent on the availability of water is, of course, hydropower generation. In no process does water prove to be essential than in hydropower plants, because variations in rainfall and temperature will considerably affect water levels in dams and reservoirs, and the health of the turbines. For example, in an impoundment-type hydropower plant, river water is stored in a reservoir through the use of a dam. Water released from the reservoirs flow through a turbine, and the spinning of the turbine activate a generator to produce electricity.

Water-related weather phenomena like droughts or floods can lead to exceedingly low levels of water in dams, or to destruction of and damage to turbines due to silt, respectively. When hydropower generation plants suffer these devastating predicaments, shortage in electricity supply may ensue, and a country’s economy may be rendered unstable.

Developing and exploiting petroleum and oil & gas resources also use large amounts of water. Though water is not completely eliminated, the process produces wastewater that needs to be disposed of or treated before being reused.

Water used in electrical power creation processes are either consumed or withdrawn. When water is consumed, it either disappears or is diverted from its origin. The danger is that the source may no longer be replenished, or if it does, it may take decades, or even longer. In cases when water is withdrawn, the quality of water that is given back to the source may no longer be the same as the time when water was extracted. It may be different in oxygen content, salinity, acidity, radioactivity and temperature, to name a few, and the changes may harm the environment and humans who will utilize it. 

On the other hand, water supply and sewage disposal needs energy. A considerable amount of energy is needed to extract, transport, treat and use water in urban and rural areas. For instance, drinking water must be pumped to treatment facilities, pre-treated, and then pushed or transported to consumers. According to experts, energy consumed in pumping groundwater is within the area of 537 kWh and 2,270 kWh per million gallons depending on the pumping depth.

Water desalination is another process that involves a considerably high energy consumption. As fresh water may not always be abundant or available, salt water is desalinated to produce water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. Compared to extracting water from rivers or the ground, water recycling or water conservation process, desalination entails a relatively increased level of electricity.

In light of the foregoing, the fact that water and energy are critical, reciprocally reliant resources may be a foregone conclusion. The production of electrical energy requires huge amounts of water, and water extraction, treatment and availability necessitate energy. Today, the world is facing a looming water-energy crisis that threatens to limit the amount of drinking water and of water to be used for electricity generation in the coming decades. Fragmented policies to tackle this challenge are only seen to give rise to short-term, non-viable results. As the world’s population grows, the demand for both resources will continue to increase, and managing the two assets collectively will help maintain dependable and sustainable supplies of both water and energy for the coming generations.

Post scriptum

Did you know that there is a process of energy generation that harnesses the power of tides? Tidal energy generators involve large underwater turbines that are designed to capture the kinetic motion of the ebbing and surging of ocean tides to produce electricity. Owing to the enormous size of the world’s oceans, tidal power generation is said to have the potential to be a main source of energy for countries blessed with the necessary resources. 

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PRESS INQUIRIES

Robert Bagatsing

Altaaqa Global

Tel: +971 56 1749505

rbagatsing@altaaqaglobal.com