Desalination is commonly used to convert salt water into fresh water for drinking and irrigation. In many coastal areas, desalination of water is the only possibility of providing fresh water to populations.
Although the desalination it is a necessary process, can be expensive and energy intensive. Some new technologies are being developed to allow us to desalinate water efficiently and affordably. For example, using the same wave energy to reduce costs.
Wave energy is a renewable energy used for years to power offshore equipment such as lighthouses and navigation buoys. Today it could be useful for desalinating water and solving many problems.
Gaia, drinking water from wave motion
The startup Aquamarine Power developed a device called Oyster Wave Energy Converter which captures energy from waves and converts it into electricity, which can then be used to desalinate water.
Oyster has already been successfully tested in Scotland and Portugal, and is now being installed in Australia, to combat the country's water shortage: in the meantime, however, an even more effective solution already appears. It's from the Norwegian startup Ocean Oasis, and is about to be tested in the waters off Gran Canaria.
Gaia, this is the name of the prototype, is an offshore desalination device 10 meters high, 7 meters wide and weighing approximately 100 tonnes. It allows seawater to be desalination and pumped to coastal users. There's no better place than the Canary Islands to test it, because it's about a place with a structural water deficit. It rains little, the soil is very permeable and the groundwater has already been exploited too much.
Desalination of water, a great achievement in a complicated scenario
Desalination, as mentioned, is a useful tool when it comes to providing drinking water to countries where supply is a problem, but the UN warns of the challenges still to be overcome to desalinate water in the "right" way of the oceans.
Fossil fuels used today make the situation worse, polluting coastal ecosystems and contributing to global warming. This is why we need to push for sustainable desalination, and wave energy is still too little used. Last year in Europe just 2,2 megawatts were installed of tidal flow capacity. It is certainly a notable improvement compared to just 260 kilowatts in 2020, but these are still ridiculous figures: to be clear, in the same period of time Europe has prepared 17,4 gigawatts of wind capacity.
Let's keep our eyes open on innovations like Gaia: if you have any, report them mercilessly and they will always find space on this site: perhaps in the future we will be able to drink in peace knowing that we are also helping the environment. Or at least we won't make it any worse.
