Right, first things first. I've
got a new background. The thing is, it was getting a bit cramped in the cabin at
the back of my house where I've been doing all the filming and all the editing for about five
years now, so I've decided to keep the cabin just for editing and I've moved the filming kit
inside my house, where it's also a bit warmer! Some people will like the change, and some
of you will probably hate it. But I suspect the vast majority of you will not be all
that bothered either way. And to be honest, any one of those three reactions is absolutely
fine with me. So let's just get straight into today's topic, which is a look at what is, in my
view, one of the most innovative and genuinely useful pieces of real world sustainable
technology I've come across for some time. Hello and welcome to Just Have a Think. So what's
this amazing piece of tech I'm referring to? Well, to paraphrase a well-known 60s Sci-Fi TV series
'it's desalination Jim but not as we know it!' Now desalination's obviously been around for
a long time - almost six decades in fact, ever since Alexander Zarchin patented a sea
water vacuum freezing device back in 1964. But desalination technologies have been getting
a pretty bad rap in recent years for reasons that we'll have a look at in a moment. So it was
unusually uplifting to discover a completely new approach to desalination that pretty much does
away with all the problems of current technologies and also manages to recycle hundreds of thousands
of single-use plastic bottles that would otherwise have gone to landfill or been tossed into the
sea. I'll explain all that later in the video, but first of all let's look at why the
existing tech is apparently so problematic. Large-scale desalination is generally
achieved in one of two ways. The so-called thermal method sucks in seawater and then
heats it up to produce a pure water vapour, leaving behind a very concentrated brine
that then gets pumped back into the sea. The more modern, and now much more widely
used, method involves something called a reverse osmosis membrane, which I guess is the one
most of us have probably heard of. Essentially, sea water is forced through one of these
membranes at very high pressure so that all the salt and other contaminants are all
filtered out, leaving pure fresh water at the end. You will still get some brine that needs to be
discharged somewhere, but reverse osmosis tends to produce less brine than the thermal method,
plus it's cheaper and more efficient overall, so reverse osmosis now accounts for about 70
percent of all desalination around the world. Arguably the biggest criticism of these huge
centralized desalination plants though is that they use enormous amounts of energy to process
large volumes of seawater, which in turn results in high greenhouse gas emissions from the
generation of electricity. Those greenhouse gas emissions warm the climate, which makes
water scarcity a bigger and bigger problem, which means the world needs more and more
desalination plants and, well you get the idea! It's a similar feedback loop to the one causing
an exponential rise in air conditioners around the world, which is something we've
talked about in a previous video. There are some small, medium and even large
desalination plants powered by on-grid renewables like wind and solar, but even if renewable
energy was diverted on a mass scale to run all desalination plans they would still be using
a huge amount of energy that arguably could and should be used elsewhere to displace fossil fuels.
So that's problem number one. Problem number two is the accidental intake of fish, larvae and
plankton, and any other kind of small marine life that's unlucky enough to be swimming next to
an intake pipe when the system gets switched on. Even with grilles on the front of the pipes,
millions of tiny marine creatures are still inadvertently sucked into desalination systems
this way each year. The third problem is the brine itself. If it's released from a single outflow
at a large plant or from a cluster of plants in a small area, which is what happens in the Persian
Gulf region for example, then it represents an extremely sudden and disruptive concentration of
very warm, very salty water that does all sorts of nasty things to the local marine ecosystems. A
recent analysis by the United Nations found that brine discharge from the 16,000 or so desalination
plants in operation around the globe today is 50% higher than previous estimates. In actual
numbers that equates to about 142 million cubic metres of concentrated brine being sent
back into localized coastal regions every single day. That's enough to cover the entire state of
Florida in 30 centimetres or 12 inches of liquid. Last but by no means least is the fact that
these enormous desalination plants are extremely expensive to build and run. Those costs have to
be amortized over the lifetime of the project, and if a large part of that amortization is based
on the dollar value of fresh water delivered then of course, as energy costs rise, then inevitably
so does the cost of fresh water to the consumer. Water scarcity is a growing problem all over
the world, even in affluent Western regions like California and Nevada. In 2020 roughly one
percent of the human population relied solely on desalination for their daily water supply. By 2050
that number is expected to increase to 10 percent. That'll equate to about a billion people who
will have no access to fresh water without some kind of desalination technology. If the world
continues to desalinate water using existing methods then by mid-century the process will
account for about five percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions which will contribute
heavily to the feedback loop I mentioned earlier. So anyone coming along with a better
idea probably needs to be listened to. And that's where a Canadian start-up called Oneka
Technologies comes in. The company was founded in 2015 by a mechanical engineer and entrepreneur
called Dragan Tucic, specifically to address the issues we've just looked at. I caught up
with the company's commercial manager Camille St Pierre via Zoom recently to get a better idea
of how their innovation works and why they believe it could transform an entire sector. Not all
desalination takes place in coastal regions but the vast majority of it does, and that begs
the question of whether it might be possible to harness some of the energy in the ocean itself
to provide power for the desalination process. Now when people like me talk about wave and tidal
energy technologies we're almost always talking about devices that can convert that energy
into electricity, either for local use or for transmission back into an electricity grid system.
That's not how Oneka have tackled the problem. They've developed a system that harnesses the
motion of ocean waves in an entirely mechanical way with no electricity generated or used in
any part of their desalination process at all. It works like this. A floating platform is
anchored to the seabed and just like any other ocean-going vessel it bobs up and down with
the motion of the water. As it moves downwards it draws in seawater via a strainer on the underside
which has a very fine mesh across its opening to vastly reduce the chances of sucking in any
tiny marine creatures that may be passing by. The sea water then goes through filters to
remove the worst of any other rough stuff. As the platform rises with the waves the sea
water passes through a mechanical pump followed by a pressure and flow optimization system.
That provides enough pressure to force the water through a reverse osmosis membrane very
similar to the technology I described earlier. All of this is wave driven don't forget,
there's no electricity anywhere in the system. Now here's where a second key difference comes
into play. The system desalinates 25 percent of the water that passes through the membrane,
leaving 75 percent of the water as a relatively low salinity brine which then gets sent back
through the pressure and flow optimization system before going back into the water below
the platform. That means the discharge brine is only about 30 percent more saline than the sea
water that it's being released into, compared to conventional desalination plant discharge
which can have between 100 and 150 percent higher salinity than the surrounding water.
As well as that a typical Oneka installation will be comprised of multiple relatively small
platforms distributed over a very wide area, as opposed to one huge centralized desalination
plant spewing out brine at a single location. That creates what Oneka describe as 'multiple
outfalls' which combine with the natural sea currents and waves to very quickly diffuse the
brine back to nominal levels. In fact Oneka's own testing has demonstrated that within a distance
of only about two to three metres from each platform no change in salinity can be detected.
Those findings are now being formally validated by university researchers and environmental
engineering companies in Chile and California. The fresh water is then sent to shore under
pressure via a single submerged pipeline, again driven by the mechanical action of the
waves with no additional electrical power. The only electrical components you'll find on one
of these platforms are the solar panels that are there purely to drive the sensors that monitor
performance and send data to the cloud where they're available online in real time. Oneka have
developed three distinct categories of platforms to cater for more or less any size of application.
The smallest of the three is the Ice Cube class. This is a unit that can be disassembled and
packed inside a standard size shipping crate, which makes it extremely easy to send out to
remote coastal bases or as an emergency fast response solution in disaster relief
situations. The platform's about 1.5 metres in diameter and produces about one
cubic metre of fresh water per day. And for those of us who work in more basic units, that
equates to a thousand litres or 220 gallons. Having carried out extensive lab testing and
computer simulations the Oneka team then produced a slightly larger prototype for real-world
testing. This one was capable of producing 10 cubic metres of fresh water a day and it was taken
straight out into the extreme ocean conditions off the coast of Canada where it endured, and
survived, waves of up to seven metres in height. Next up is the Iceberg Class with about a six
metre diameter equivalent, and the capacity to churn out up to 50 cubic metres of fresh water
per day, which is 50,000 litres or 11,000 gallons. The floating platform is made from recycled
polyethylene terephthalate or PET, so it's perhaps the most environmentally friendly way of chucking
discarded soda bottles into the sea that anyone has ever devised. This size of installation
is ideal for small off-grid communities or perhaps for tourism and remote resorts, or
even for smaller industrial applications. A working example of the Iceberg Class is
currently deployed as part of the first phase of a commercial project in Florida that will eventually
have a total generating capacity of 300 cubic metres of water per day. Full production of the
Iceberg Class is scheduled to commence in 2023. Oneka are now working flat out to develop
the largest of the three platforms, which they call the Glacier class. This one will have a
diameter of between 12 and 15 metres and a typical installation comprising 40 of these platforms
will be capable of producing more than 20 million litres, or almost four and a half million gallons
of fresh water a day. An installation that size would be usable by municipal authorities or in
large industrial or agricultural applications. So what about cost? Well, the numbers can vary
quite significantly depending on things like the size of the plants, the local cost
of electricity, the length of the water supply agreement, cost of capital, the regulatory
environment, and even the quality of the water. Huge centralized desalination plants
in the Middle East, typically powered by cheap electricity from fossil fuels,
can produce between 300,000 and 900,000 cubic metres of fresh water per day for
around 50 cents to a dollar per cubic metre. Smaller facilities that are closer in size to
Oneka installations typically sell fresh water for between two and five dollars per cubic metre.
But electricity costs represent roughly half the operating cost of a conventional desalination
plant, and that's an overhead that Oneka's system simply doesn't have. So on a like for like
basis Oneka's team reckon their technology can already produce water at a lower cost, and
as they scale up production and start operating larger arrays they expect to be producing water
at only a quarter of the current market price. So what's your view? Do you think this kind of
desalination technology can generally make a difference, or do you see issues that we perhaps
haven't covered in this video? Maybe you're working in the industry and you have some insights
that you can share with us all. If you do then, as always, leave your thoughts in the comments
section below, and I'll be interested to see what you think. That's it for this week though.
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whom reached an anniversary of Patreon membership during November. This channel would simply not
be possible without them, so they all have my undying gratitude. And if you're Keen to learn
more about other sustainable technologies like the one we've talked about today, then I reckon
you'll enjoy this video as well. As always, thanks very much for watching. Have a great week, and
remember to just have a think. See you next week.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/RPM314:
SS: As regions around the world plunge into water scarcity, the more affluent ones are turning to desalinated seawater to survive. Existing technology is highly energy intensive and outputs highly saline brine (toxic to marine life) back into the ocean, and is therefore unsustainable on both the material input and material output sides of the equation.
This startup seeks to deepen our state of ecological overshoot by manufacturing huge fleets of small, floating desalination boats which are to be tethered to the ocean floor and have their pumps driven by wave power pulling on the tether. This reduces lifetime energy costs and dilutes the brine output, but overall falls victim to the "efficiency will save us" fallacy. Regions which exceed their environment's capacity to supply drinking water will collapse regardless.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/z0c3mh/copium_zero_energy_cost_desalination_is_actually/ix4pud9/
SS: As regions around the world plunge into water scarcity, the more affluent ones are turning to desalinated seawater to survive. Existing technology is highly energy intensive and outputs highly saline brine (toxic to marine life) back into the ocean, and is therefore unsustainable on both the material input and material output sides of the equation.
This startup seeks to deepen our state of ecological overshoot by manufacturing huge fleets of small, floating desalination boats which are to be tethered to the ocean floor and have their pumps driven by wave power pulling on the tether. This reduces lifetime energy costs and dilutes the brine output, but overall falls victim to the "efficiency will save us" fallacy. Regions which exceed their environment's capacity to supply drinking water will collapse regardless.
This is why I lurv redditors. you don't even have to say its a scam.
Its free! because someone-not-me will pay for it, waaaay over there ------------>
The cope is strong with this one, need life support
TANSTAAFL
Zero energy costs huh? Somehow breaking the rules of thermodynamics is easy now.
It's going to be funny if somehow such machines spread out on the ocean and manage to change salinity enough to disrupt the THC.
The channel is full of technohopium, but it's not the usual hype.
This is a nice paper on an alternative though:
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/ee/c9ee04122b
Can't they repurposed whales for desal.