Le dessalement reposant sur les combustibles fossiles n’est pas durable - Malcolm Aw
Fossil-Fuel-Based Desalination Is Not Sustainable.
Advances in desalination technology have made seawater an economically viable source of fresh water and many countries developed desalination facilities in response to shortages of naturally renewable water supplies.
The biggest challenges will be to reduce the cost of energy-intensive desalinated water, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and ensure that it becomes an environmentally acceptable solution. Cost can be reduced in several ways; by improving technology to increase the efficiency of desalination, by reducing the cost of current technology (operations and maintenance - O&M -costs) by lowering energy costs and by reducing environmental damage from desalination.
Desalination, though proven a technically feasible ongoing water supply solution, will increase future energy requirements and take a large share of national energy production. Average annual costs per cubic meter (m3) of fresh water is $1.80 and the current high continued reliance on fossil fuels for power generation produces large volumes of GHG since to generate a gigawatt hour of electricity using oil produces 700 tons of CO2 , using gas produces 450 tons and to generate the same amount of electricity using renewable energy (RE)such as concentrated solar power (CSP) produces 17 tons of CO2.
Waterleaux’s massive water recovery, generation & reforestation technology - in cutting through the “middle-man” which is doing away with the costly need to generate electricity and hence not incurring electricity cost of desalination plants - produces zero ton of CO2.
Large scale freshwater supply is distilled from seawater, especially in regions where fossil fuels are abundant and cheap, using the multistage flash (MSF) distillation process. This process is being replaced by the multi effect distillation (MED) lower energy demand technology.
Today, membrane technologies such as reverse osmosis (RO) have made major advances, but it is expensive and electrical energy consumption is high. Potential energy from solar irradiance per square kilometre per year is equivalent to the amount of energy generated from two billion barrels of oil and can be used in photovoltaic (PV) systems and in large solar thermal power stations. However, PV can generate only electricity.
Waterleaux’s concentrated solar radiation (CSR) clean technology generates heat intensity of a high-flux solar furnace equivalent to 50,000 suns. Waterleaux aims to substantially mainstream CSR-desalination by promoting public-private partnership, to square public need with private entrepreneurial initiatives, and to persuade governments to decommission fossil fuel desalination plants so as to improve environmental health and well being.