By Dina Spector 11 hours ago
Posted on 03/12/2014 8:25:27 PM PDT by ckilmer
WaterFX
A parabolic trough collects energy from the sun. The heat is used to evaporate clean water from the salty agricultural drainage water of irrigated crops.
This year, farmers in California's Central Valley likely won't receive any water through the federal irrigation program, a network of reservoirs, rivers, and canals that is normally replenished yearly by ice melt from the Sierra mountains.
Crippling water shortages have made desalination technology more attractive, including a startup, WaterFX, that uses the sun to produce heat. The heat separates salt and water through evaporation.
WaterFX has fewer environmental repercussions than traditional methods of desalination that rely on fossil fuels to generate electricity.
The technology could not have come at a better time.
No end in sight
During a drought-free year, the federally run Central Valley Project provides enough water to irrigate 3 million acres of agricultural land. Last year, farmers only received 20% of their allotment.
The lack of water is not just worrying for growers. It affects all people who eat food. One third of the nation's produce is grown in the Central Valley — composed of Sacramento Valley in the north and San Joaquin Valley in the south — and the deep water cuts mean that more than half a million acres of crop land will be left unplanted.
Some scientists predict California's drought could last as long as a century . Going forward, the state is going to need a substantial water supply that doesn't rely on the aqueduct system, says Aaron Mandell, WaterFX chairman and founder.
However, in order to counter California's drought, the push must be toward renewable desalination plants rather than fossil-fuel dependent facilities that further contribute to climate change.
Making freshwater from sunshine
In WaterFX's system, a solar trough, which looks like a jumbo-sized curved mirror, collects energy from the sun's rays and transfers that heat to a pipe filled with mineral oil. The mineral oil feeds the heat into a system that evaporates the salty water being treated. Steam is produced, which condenses into pure liquid water. The remaining salt solidifies and can be removed, says Mandell. That salts can be used in other industries as building materials, metals, or fertilizers.
In order to operate continuously, the solar trough is very large so that it collects extra heat during the day. The energy is stored and used to run the system at night when the sun isn't shining.
By using sun as the fuel source, WaterFX uses roughly one-fifth of the electricity consumed by traditional desalination plants, according to Mandell. Less electricity means lower operating costs. With conventional desalination, electricity makes up 50-60% of the water costs, says Mandell. A typical desalination plant in San Diego operates at about $900 per acre-foot, while it costs around $450 to produce an acre-foot of water with WaterFX. (An acre-foot is 325,000 gallons, or the amount of water it takes to cover an acre at a depth of one foot).
WaterFX
WaterFX chairman and founder, Aaron Mandell.
"Solar desalination is still a very immature technology so there's a quite a bit of room to drive that cost down even further," said Mandell.
Many desalination facilities, including the $1 billion Carlsbad plant set to open in 2016, use a process known as reverse osmosis that forces seawater through billions of tiny holes that filter out salt and other impurities. This method can produce fresh water on a large scale, but has economic and environmental drawbacks. It uses an immense amount of electricity and only about half of the seawater that goes into the system comes out as clean water. The remaining half is dumped back into the ocean as salty brine where it can be harmful to marine plants and animals.
By contrast, Mandell says that WaterFX has a 93% recovery rate, meaning that for every 100 gallons of water that goes in, 93 gallons of usable water are spit out.
WaterFX also helps solve an issue that has long plagued irrigated land. Soils in the arid west of San Joaquin Valley naturally contain a lot of salt as well as high concentrations of metals, like selenium, which can be toxic to humans and wildlife. When the soil is irrigated, the salt, selenium, and other elements become concentrated in the drainage water that collects in a system of drains and pumps under the crops. In the past, harmful drainage water might have been discharged into rivers, wetlands, and aquifers in the San Joaquin Valley. Now, that otherwise unusable water can be diverted to WaterFX and turned into irrigation water again.
The first test
The Panoche Water District in Central Valley is home to the first demonstration plant, a 6,500-square foot system that is capable of producing around 10 gallons of freshwater a minute, or roughly 14,000 of freshwater each day.
When the demonstration plant is operating in commercial mode, running 24 hours a day, it can put out 25 to 30 gallons of freshwater a minute, says Mandell.
WaterFX
The pilot project, funded by the California Department of Water Resources, will hopefully prove that the WaterFX system is more reliable (it doesn't depend on the Sierra snowpack) and affordable than other freshwater sources.
The water that's being treated by the pilot plant streams in from a canal that collects salty drainage water from around 200 farms in the area and brings it to a single location. In the pilot phase, the clean water that's produced is blended back in with the drainage water, but a commercial plant would send the water back to farmers through a series of canals that are already in place.
Additionally, small-scale systems could be used by individual farmers on site to recycle their own drainage water.
A bright future
WaterFX is not the first company to experiment with solar desalination. The Sahara Forest project in Qatar and an Australian company called Sundrop Farms are using the technology to grow food in greenhouses. But this is the first time a company has focused on using the sun's energy "to produce a scalable, long-term water supply," Mandell said.
The goal is to eventually be able to treat salty groundwater in addition to drainage water.
The immediate next step for WaterFX is to expand operations in Panoche to produce 2 million gallons of water per day. "From there it's about laying out a pathway for replicating this model all up and down the Central Valley," Mandell said. "We're trying to put a plan in place so that by 2020, we may be in a position to wean ourselves off the aqueduct system entirely."
We can’t solve a philosophical problem with Google.
All I can say is scripture and attempting to live as a Christian has led me to this conclusion. Whether I honor it in the breach or by obedience, glorifying God is what makes goodness go.
well, ok then
Another solution exists, I don't think I'm the only one who thought of it. There are natural thermal vents in Northern California that are used for power generation. The power plants were built by PG&E, but the utility was forced to sell it off to an independent power supplier company by the Public Utilities Commission. My wife, when she worked at PG&E, had to visit that site, and told me it stunk of sulfur but it was free energy. That plant supplies most of the electricity to Northern California just north of SF.
So why can't this natural steam coming out of the ground, be used for heating polluted water in order to condense out clean drinking water, as well as generating electricity? Polluted or sea water can be pumped in pipes to the site, and clean water can be pumped out to other destinations. Why use the sun, when you have a natural hot water source from below ground that operates around the clock?
bflr
Not kidding. This actually solves a gaggle of philosophical problems.
One of the most difficult books of the bible is Job, but it truly does give a window into the issue that no other book does.
The devil accuses Job to God. God lets the devil wipe out almost everything for Job. Ultimately after enduring a lot of grief from his friends, God lectures Job on how great He is, then restores Job’s fortunes.
What, God, are You mad?
No He is not mad. He is just showing where the root of goodness is. Job considered it worth the grief, but not while the grief was going on.
RedNeck wrote:
If one of these things will yield more energy than it took to put it together, then the celebration might begin.
***Umm... 14000 of these things yielded more energy than was put into them. And on top of that, the energy was beyond what any known chemical process could produce. That is the definition of “excess heat”.
You’re probably thinking electrical plant. Hey if it can be stoked with this stuff at practical power levels... and it doesn’t need as much energy to make as it will yield... why not.
***I’m thinking the aim is to replace coal firing plants as they go offline due to excessive EPA restrictions. They’re going out of business by the handful, every day. I’m not sure LENR is mature enough to step in. But if it is, $Billions will be made for some very select individuals. In a VERY rapid time frame, seemingly overnight. Not like Bill Gates over 2 decades, we’re talking “Slumdog Billionaire”.
There’s still going to be the question of consumption of material. Can they take used fuel and make new good fuel out of it? Or does use mean it’s forever useless for the reaction now?
**It doesn’t matter. When you decommission a coal plant or worse, nukular plant, there are tons of disposal issues. There is some evidence that LENR can be used to reduce radioactivity of some terrible substances, but even though it was done by Mitsubishi & Toyota, I think that will simply be a side line. The disposal issues for LENR will be perhaps 1/10th that of coal.
I dunno. Sounds good to me.
Well don’t get so slumdog heady yet.
Energy to put it together includes all the processing. If buildings have to be built, count that. If canisters have to be forged, count that. You get the idea. I hope.
I’m in the middle of my own spiritual experience, more like Jonah.
http://www.netivotshalom.org/5770-YK-aft-buchin
In 1891, a young sailor named James Bartley was an apprentice on a whaling vessel called “The Star Of The East.” As the “Star of the East” traveled through the South Atlantic in pursuit of a tremendous whale, disaster, somewhat inevitably, ensued, the ship was capsized and Bartley, much to his surprise, I’m sure, was swallowed by the whale.
Bartley was discovered three days later as the now dead whale was being cut open. The gastric juices from the whale’s stomach had burnt off all of the hair on Bartley’s body, and permanently bleached his skin bone white. For the remainder of his life he was blind. Despite all this, he was otherwise healthy and in good shape after two weeks of recuperation.
Ultimately, Bartley returned to England, where he worked as a cobbler for the remaining eighteen years of his life. The final, fitting epitaph carved on Bartley’s tombstone read: “James Bartley -1870-1909 - A Modern Jonah.”
What bothers me about this legend, which originally came from a 19th century newspaper article, is that it leaves out the most important part of the Jonah story. While it maintains the iconic image of the whale, it removes God from the equation. Jonah, unlike Bartley, did not have fellow whalers to save him. The whale that swallowed Jonah was never cut open; rather, Jonah’s redemption came from God.
It’s a beautiful moment. Jonah, a skeptical, perhaps cowardly prophet, tries to run away from God, only to realize the futility of his actions. So he turns to God. His prayer, uttered while in the belly of the whale, is the crux of the story; it is the turning point for Jonah, and it demonstrates one of the key lessons of the book: That God does hear our prayers.
In Jonah’s prayer to God, Jonah says: “You cast me into the depths, into the heart of the sea, the floods engulfed me; All your breakers and billows swept over me... The waters closed in over me, the deep engulfed me. Weeds twined around my head. I sank to the base of the mountains; the bars of the earth closed upon me forever.” This depicts Jonah before he’s had his satori moment, when he is still stuck in despair. This is the pre-transformed Jonah speaking; all he can see is misery and gloom.
....
You get the idea. I hope.
***No, I do not.
“An average of 14 cells”
out of what...
***It doesn’t frickin matter, out of what. If 14 cells replicated the event, then the event was replicated. It doesn’t matte if it was 14 out of a hundred, or 14/10000 or in Dolly’s case, 14 out of 1 Million. Do you deny that Dolly was cloned? If not, then why do you question LENR, which boasts 14000 (and by this time, wAY MORE) replications?
If someone told you that you would get less energy out of the cold fusion cells than it took to construct them, they’d tell you to take a flying leap. And you got to count ALL the energy that it takes to construct them. Mining the metal. Refining it. Shipping it. Manufacturing the cells. Building the buildings. If you have a gain in one stage but too many losses in another stage, you do not have a viable energy production process! You only have a means of shuffling existing sourced energy around, while losing some of it. This is one of the great criticisms of gasoline ethanol, incidentally. When you count the energy expended to get it, you might as well just have used pure gasoline. It might or might not fight pollution but it won’t fight energy waste.
You have just come up with the Energizer Bunny that will dwarf the energy costs of building it, MAYBE. I don’t know how big this thing is... and also how are they calculating density, like based on before-and-after masses of the apparatus? Or based on gross mass?
Just be sure nobody’s pulling a slick one on you. It would be so tempting, especially if the technology is tied to a person and not open!
I don’t know how big this thing is... and also how are they calculating density, like based on before-and-after masses of the apparatus? Or based on gross mass?
***The guys who calculated it are all eminent physics professors in Europe, so I’m certain they know which way to calculate it is the best. Far better than how I would do it, although it would have made sense for someone like me to come alongside and simply say, “we should just go and rent our own power source”. That kinda thing. A bit pedestrian, but in the end, saves everyone a bunch of headache.
Just be sure nobody’s pulling a slick one on you. It would be so tempting, especially if the technology is tied to a person and not open!
***Well, at this point I would say confidently that the technology is open. There is the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project, which recently found GAMMA RAYS in their Celani cell. If you had the means you could simply build one yourself, and Hans Biberian replicated their result within 48 hours. Then there’s the NANOR device available from Dr. Hagelstein of MIT. And if you dare, you could buy a Rossi reactor for $1.5M. That is 3 separate LENR groups openly selling their devices. We have turned a corner.
based on before-and-after masses of the apparatus? Or based on gross mass?
***Why bother with something so touchy? Just base it on heat. You’ve got a cylinder of a certain size. You fill it with the highest energy density stuff you can find in our chemical universe. And you light it on fire. It produces the same amount of heat at, say 300 degrees C for 1 hour and runs out. Then you run one of these devices, it generates 320 degrees C for 10,000 hours before it gives out. (Actually, it didn’t give out. They just ended the test so they could get on with it).
What’s the energy density difference? It is at least 10 thousand X. Pretty simple, isn’t it. Even if you got an error here or there, at that scale it makes little difference.
if it’s solar powered how can it run in 24 hour mode?
Solar plant running 24 hours a day when in commercial mode.
Neat trick.
I proposed a desalt process using freezing slurries as part of a senior project some forty years ago. Nobody wants to do it because the can steal water from northern California. The only time those in the desert want to pay attention is when they are truly out of water....
If southern Californians wouldn’t hose down their driveways and wouldn’t fill all those swim pools they would have enough water to drink and bathe (not necessarily enough to grow an oasis in the desert)
according to the article the plant stores the heat in “a pipe filled with mineral oil”
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