Desalitech’s patented reverse osmosis process can recover up to 98% of water treated, the company says, far exceeding recovery rates of most industrial and municipal reverse osmosis systems. The company, which has raised $24.5 million in funding to date, names Audi, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and L’Oréal among its customers.
ACCIONA was awarded in 2004 with a 20-year contract to redesign, build and operate the Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Facility (TBWSWDF). With this recent 5-year extension, ACCIONA and its partner U.S. Water will operate this flagship in desalination until 2029.
Supporters of the 50-million-gallon-a-day desalination plant, to be built near the coast in Huntington Beach, argued it would be a drought-proof source of potable water during a time when water is expected to become a scarce resource.
Rispetto a quasi cinquant’anni fa la situazione in Italia è peggiorata. „Dobbiamo cominciare da casa nostra – spiega, incontrando i giornalisti a margine dei lavori – l’Italia è determinata nella risposta alla crisi idrica. Molto è cambiato in termini di conoscenze, strumenti e strategie. Ma è evidente che non abbiamo fatto abbastanza per combattere quella che è una delle gravi emergenze planetarie“. „Nessuno – aggiunge – deve sentirsi estraneo a questa tragedia“.
The plant, with a capacity of 108,000 m3/day, supplies at least 10% of the water consumption of the Tampa Bay region and was the biggest in the country at the time of its construction. ACCIONA has operated the plant from the outset in partnership with US WATER Services Corporation, which took over from American Water in September this year.
The device is fundamentally a solar desalination machine that takes in salt water and heats it with natural sunlight. What makes the machine efficient is its ability to circulate water in swirling eddies similar to larger „thermohaline“ circulation that happens in the ocean. This movement, coupled with the heat of the sun, results in water evaporating and leaving the salt behind. The water vapor can then be collected and condensed to be used as pure drinking water.
“For the first time, it is possible for water, produced by sunlight, to be even cheaper than tap water,” said co-author Lenan Zhang, a research scientist at MIT’s Device Research Laboratory. The device would also last for several years before requiring replacement parts.
The plant, with a capacity of 108,000 m3/day, supplies at least 10% of the water consumption of the Tampa Bay region and was the biggest in the country at the time of its construction. ACCIONA has operated the plant from the outset in partnership with US WATER Services Corporation, which took over from American Water in September this year.
SELECTEX stands for selective extraction and is a derivation of Adionics’ AquaOmnes® technology. Adionics introduced this technology at the last IFAT Trade Fair (Munich, May 2014) and further industrial variants for brines and industrial water at IWS15 and WETEX15. AquaOmnes removes salts from saline water by liquid-liquid extraction whatever the salinity without being limited by any scaling barrier.
Last November, the California Coastal Commission approved a permit for a sprawling, $330 million seawater desalination facility in Marina—a blue-collar city of 22,500 residents that is located about 15 minutes north of the more affluent community of Monterey. If approved, Cal-Am’s desalination plant would produce 4.8 million gallons of freshwater per day and would be the first seawater desalination plant constructed in California in nearly a decade.