The Green Optimistic

Wastewater treatment plants are usually packed with industrial-sized aerators, pumps and other machines that usually use a lot of electricity from the grid. But SunPower Corp. developed a solar power system for the West Riverside Wastewater Treatment Plant in Corona, California that is able to generate one-megawatt of energy

I didn’t really actively realize that current biofuel production technologies imply the usage of fossil fuels at certain moments of the production process. This fact reduces the biofuels’ credibility as a cleaner source of energy and increases their carbon footprint.

Worldwide terminus lakes could benefit from a new system to desalinate water, using a low-cost solar pond and patented membrane distillation system powered by renewable energy.

The process, called osmotic power, is a harvesting the energy that appears when salt water and fresh water meet through an osmotic filter. For the moment, the project is small-scale but could prove the great potential of osmotic energy.

Saltworks Technologies reported that they can produce 1 cubic meter of fresh water using just 1kWh compared to 3.7kWh per cubic meter achievable using reverse osmosis.

A company called Renew Blue, Inc. will use wave power to run a desalination plant in Freeport, Texas. The resulted water will be finally put into corn-based biodegradable plastic bottles. The SEADOG power system is made from a buoy which puts in motion a piston mechanism that rotates a water wheel to generate electricity.

The company Chemviron Midwest has developed the world’s first solar-powered water purification system. The 25-feet long and 15-feet high water purification system, known as Redbird, can be completely enclosed in a shipping container, being easily transported in various parts of the world.

The company SolarBee has created a potable-water tank mixer, designed to eliminate thermal stratification and stagnation in potable water.

Due to the freshwater crisis from places like Dubai and Australia, inventors around the world have started looking for ways to convert seawater and make it potable. Most of these desalination plants require a huge amount of energy, being powered from non-renewable sources.

For many people from urban areas the access to potable water is very low. To combat the water crisis, scientists had to design systems that can help provide clean drinking water from something that is omnipresent.

Water purification is not a myth anymore. It can become the reality we’ve always dreamed of and this with low costs.

Robert McGinnis, Yale doctoral student and Menachem Elimelech, Chair of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, have developed systems that can harness the power of osmosis to transform non-potable water sources like seawater to freshwater and generate in the same time electricity.