Clean Energy Business Plans Need Only Present the Solution
A fellow from somewhere in the Middle East claims to have a new technology for water desalination, and I requested something that explains the science. Even though he writes at considerable length, his English is not sufficiently strong to permit me to understand his idea and its validity (if there is any). I wrote: Sorry, I can’t understand your English. Is there a website that describes this? To which he responds: Oh! I dident think…. its a new technology.
I thought I’d publish my response, because it speaks to a great number of clean energy business plans I see that present long discussions of the problem, i.e., environmental degradation in one form or another. This is unnecessary, and detracts from the quality of the piece by insulting the reader’s intelligence. Here I responded:
There is no doubt that:
• The world needs more potable water
• This need will become more intense over time
• Desalination is one of several ideas to help solve the problem
• Desalination requires energy
• All energy comes at a cost environmentally, though some sources are better than others
• Thus, if the energy comes from extremely dirty sources, it’s possible that we’re making the problem worse
There is no need to explain all that. I need to understand the science that would suggest that your approach has the potential to be competitive with the others that exist currently. If you have a friend who’s fluent in English to explain this in a sentence or two, that would be terrific. It would be good if he could compare it to the cost-effectiveness of desalination via reverse osmosis and distillation, and even better if he could take on the entire range of approaches that the world has evolved over time:
- Distillation
- Multi-stage flash distillation (MSF)
- Multiple-effect distillation (MED|ME)
- Vapor-compression (VC)
- Ion exchange
- Membrane processes
- Electrodialysis reversal (EDR)
- Reverse osmosis (RO)
- Nanofiltration (NF)
- Membrane distillation (MD)
- Forward osmosis (FO)
- Freezing desalination
- Geothermal desalination
- Solar desalination
- Solar humidification-Dehumidification (HDH)
- Multiple-effect humidification (MEH)
- Methane hydrate crystallization
- High grade water recycling
- Seawater greenhouse
Mr. Shields.
American commercial buildings and industry and electricity producing power plants consumed approx. 19 Trillion cu.ft. of natural gas.
In every 1 million Btu’s of combusted natural gas there are 5 gallons of recoverable distilled water, and this water is very useable. It does not have to be pumped from a desalinization plant to the building or facility as it is already there.
To get at this water, Increasing natural gas energy efficiency has to be applied. The heat energy has to be removed with the technology of Condensing flue gas heat recovery, but it is there to be created.
The US DOE states that for every 1 million Btu’s of heat energy that is recovered from the exhaust of combusted natural gas and this recovered heat energy is utilized, 117 lbs of CO2 will Not be put into the atmosphere.
Getting to this water has reduced Global Warming and CO2 Emissions.
Increased Energy Efficiency = Reduced utility bills = Profit
What natural gas is not wasted today, will be there to be used another day.