Wave2O is a water desalination plant for poor countries too. It lets drinking water bubble and gets the electricity it needs from the ocean waves.
Water scarcity is already a problem that affects two thirds of the world’s population. With more prosperity and a westernized lifestyle, water consumption will continue to rise. However, climate change is likely to lead to even less rainfall and more drought in areas that are already arid.
There is plenty of water here. However, in the form of salty sea water that you cannot drink and with which you cannot irrigate fields. Only about three percent of the global amount consists of fresh water and a good part of it is also bound in ice.
Therefore, attempts have been made to desalinate seawater for a long time. Technically, the method also works, but reverse osmosis is an expensive process that uses a lot of energy. The research group of the project “H2020 W2O” went a completely different way. Their goal was to find an inexpensive desalination method that works with renewable energy. This energy should not come from the grid, but should be generated in the plant itself. It should be completely self-sufficient: once installed, it should virtually produce fresh water on its own – something like an artificial spring. The project is funded by the EU.
Inexpensive, durable and self-sufficient
The researchers use the already well-known MDC technology – here electroactive bacteria desalinate the seawater – and combine it with a sea wave generator. Olivier Ceberio, the project coordinator, says combining the power of ocean waves with technology that can provide fresh water to many of the 2.1 billion people struggling to access clean drinking water around the world is their answer to water scarcity.
The system “Wave2O” uses a converter that is anchored on the ocean floor and moves with the waves, so electricity is generated. Wave2O only needs a suitable position on the sea floor and a water pipe. A complete Wave2O module consists of two wave energy converters and two large containers, one of which houses the power generation system and the second one houses the fresh water generation. The sea water cannot simply be pumped out on the beach, it is extracted as purely as possible from an offshore well and filtered several times.
The system is manufactured in the factory and only installed on site. Experiments with Wave2O have already been carried out in Cape Verde, an island in the Atlantic off West Africa.
Affordable for poor communities
Apart from maintenance and monitoring, the system works autonomously and does not require expensive electricity or diesel to work. Wave2O could provide access to fresh water for millions of people living in rural and isolated communities.”Each plant will produce 4,000 cubic meters of fresh water a day, enough to meet the needs of 40,000 people “, so Ceberio.
“Our target customers are communities in developing countries and island states, which usually do not have sufficient network capacity and the necessary capital for the construction of network-connected systems.” The entire system is designed for low maintenance and a long service life. 40,000 people correspond to one city. But don’t be fooled by the proud number. The direct water demand of humans is less than the amounts that livestock and arable farming require.
The team will now test two small test facilities in the USA and the Canary Islands.
Pent-up demand for ocean energy
Techniques for converting wind or solar energy into electricity are well advanced, but harvesting the energy in the waves is still in its infancy. Work has been going on for decades on tidal power plants that take advantage of the different water levels of ebb and flow. These efforts have not had any real success in the past: Even if this type of energy generation works in principle, it turned out that the sea is particularly hostile terrain for technical installations and tends to destroy installations that are firmly attached to the ground. But by 2050, 10 percent of the electricity required in Europe could be generated on the seas. Similar to wind power, European companies hold a leading position here worldwide. But compared to wind power plants, the installations at sea were more than 20 years ago. While the wind power plants can draw on more than 20 years of experience in the operation of large wind farms, many wave or tidal power plants are in the initial prototype stage.
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