Prof. Rafi Smit from the Technion: The energy needed to desalinate a cubic meter of sea water can drive a private car 2-8 kilometers or heat a medium-sized room for an hour and a quarter
The energy needed to desalinate a cubic meter of seawater can drive a private car 2-8 kilometers, depending on the type of car. So wrote the head of the Grand Institute for Water Research at the Technion, Professor Rafi Smit, in an article published in the scientific journal ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. This energy can melt an average room for an hour and a quarter.
"If the State of Israel supplies all its urban and industrial water needs with the help of desalinated seawater, the energy that will be used for this is on the order of five percent of the country's electricity consumption," says Professor Smith. "It is clear from this that when you want to save energy - there must be a national order of priorities for saving, in which water is still of utmost importance."
The researcher adds that water, energy and environmental issues are closely related. New methods of water treatment consume energy, and advanced techniques for the production of renewable energy, which make use of biofuels and biodiesel, consume an enormous amount of water. Different desalination methods, which consume different amounts of energy, are currently in use. Many parties - environmentalists, decision makers and even scientists, mainly in non-scientific publications - claim that the energy consumption in desalination processes is high and are looking for ways to reduce it - which causes an increase in capital investment. One must strive not only to reduce energy consumption, but also to reduce the total cost of water.
"A significant understanding of thermodynamics, heat and mass transfer, along with a proper understanding of contemporary desalination processes, are essential if we want to significantly improve desalination processes," emphasizes Professor Smith. "Thermodynamics sets the lower limit of energy required to separate water from a salt solution. There are unavoidable factors that increase actual energy consumption, but modern desalination methods have managed to significantly reduce the gap between the minimum possible levels and actual energy consumption. The consequences of narrowing this gap are that the further possible reduction is not great."
In his article, Professor Smit reviews the current energy consumption in various desalination processes. A comparison with other energy-consuming projects led him to his conclusions.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
18 תגובות
The article states that water desalination does not consume energy - why the misleading title?
If you are afraid here of the bombing of the desalination plants - are you not afraid of the bombing of the power plants? Existential dependence on this water in case of war? bullshit….
It is not cheaper to treat sewage. This has to be done because of environmental issues. The purified wastewater can be used for irrigation. Their quality will increase when the amount of water desalination in Israel increases.
Gentlemen
Happy holiday
For your information, there is a very cheap and clean electricity generation technology
The one that uses a new engine - very high efficiency
and with a new and cheap chemical fuel - the exhaust gases are completely clean 20 grams of CO2 per kilowatt/hour without PARTICLES - U and NOX
This fuel has nothing to do with any existing food product
One of its uses will be seawater desalination
It will be possible to sell discounted water to our friends and neighbors
The technology is blue and white
You can start smiling
To the question:
In Hebrew and briefly see here:
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%A4%D7%9C%D7%94
For more details see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
Can someone briefly explain what the modern treatment processes are? And what is their ecological "cost"?
Besides, when the desalination plants are in place, the Sea of Galilee will be filled again (or will be filled) and so will the aquifers.
They can provide us with water for a long period of time (about 50 years, according to current experience...)
Besides, we currently depend on the Sea of Galilee, the enemy can poison it, bomb the carrier or the dams that block it, and then it will be emptied just as much.
So your argument is strange and adds and subtracts nothing.
It's a shame they don't generate electricity from the sea waves.
The technology for this exists (partly in Israel) and is applied in several places in the world.
Not to mention that even the national carrier can be blocked even today..
Nadav:
It does not work.
Today there is not enough water to allow us a reasonable life and a large part of our water sources (and under the conditions of certain border arrangements - the vast majority of them) are in enemy territory anyway and it is much easier to close the Shiver for us by tilting the Hasbani and Yarmouch than by bombing the desalination plants. All in all, a desalination plant is like another well, and wells can also be bombed.
No
She says let's live today in a way that is sustainable so we don't have to die in the future. That is, if there is not enough water today to make quotas, the sources will close the shiver at certain hours of the day. As it used to be, and as it is now in our neighboring Jordan.
Nadav:
Your offer - to sum it up, says this:
Let's kill ourselves now so they don't kill us in the future.
Red lines have a tendency to be crossed... and the army has a tendency to struggle when it has no water...
Conclusion - you should think twice before developing dependence on desalinated water
Today, most of the water in Israel does not come from desalination, and blowing up all the facilities in Israel is crossing a red line in war because it is not a facility in military use.
Inconvenient and temporary? Blessed is the believer...
volunteer,
It is not true that Israel will be destroyed. All in all it will be very inconvenient and temporary, in an emergency you can stop farming, buy from Turkey and pump more from the Kinneret, the black line is a metaphorical line that we set, not an absolute one that cannot be crossed..
You can equally say that about any country. If Aswan is destroyed, tens of millions will die within hours in Egypt.
As much as we do, Syria has dams in the north on the big rivers without which the country would have no water, not to mention the fact that in Syria the water shortage is much more severe than in Israel.
All that will be needed to subdue Israel in the next war is to destroy its desalination facilities. And that is the only thing that is dangerous, 5% of Israel's energy is not the high price, the high price is Israel's existential dependence on this water.
It is much cheaper, economical and "green" to purify sewage water
to use them as drinking water; In the US already
We do it, lucky that we are so rich and capable
Give up the pleasure.