Apr 13 2010
The national organization for research and development of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), has collaborated with IBM for the purpose of building a water desalination plant using solar electricity to reduce the cost of water and energy.
The new desalination plant, with an anticipated capability to produce 30,000 cubic meters of pure water per day to meet the water requirement of 100,000 people, is expected to be constructed in the city of Al Khafil. IBM-KACST has plans to use an ultra-high concentrator photovoltaic (UHCPV) know-how that is currently under development to power the plant. The planned technology has the capability to run the CPV equipment at more than 1500 suns concentration. IBM-KACST is planning to utilize a nanomembrane for the purpose of filtering salts and other potentially harmful pollutants in water, a technology newly developed by the two companies for desalination.
The new, proposed nanomembrane filtration technology offers significant cost advantages over the currently used thermal and reverse osmosis technologies that cost 2.5 to 5.5 Saudi Riyals for the production of one cubic meter of pure water. The new technology is also expected to use less energy in comparison with other types of water filtration methods that are currently in use.
The currently used reverse osmosis technology has fewer inherent detrimental properties such as bio-fouling, low flux challenges and less tolerance to chlorine leading to water degradation. The new technology currently under research focuses on bettering the currently used polymeric membranes technology by making nanoscale changes to the polymer properties of the membrane to improve the filtration efficiency cost effectively.
While elaborating on the collaborative research, Vice President of IBM Big Green Innovations, Sharon Nunes explained how the arrangement has contributed towards finding newer, improved technologies in desalination and the use of solar power fields and how it would help in the introduction of energy-efficient methods that can be used in Saudi Arabia as well in other parts of the world.