Water Power R&D

Archive for the ‘MSSC’ Category

Back in February the MSSC held a conference in Las Vegas. It would be helpful to recall that five major points were made. The first was made by Marcus G. Faust to the effect that the Republicans would likely take back control of some or all of Congress this November. The second point was made by Patricia Mulroy. She said that desalination was not enough to provide water for the west. There would have to be other sources –like from the East–see my last post. The last two points were made by Wade Miller. He mentioned that desalination required much more research and a champion — like Pete Domeneci of New Mexico–once was.

What should we make of Marcus Faust’s point that republicans would storm back into Congress come the fall?  imho it would be prudent for research administrators to assume that when/if the republicans return this fall — that they will be cutting everyone’s budgets. The easiest targets will be R&D. So any money’s for R&D not committed this year are easy targets for budget cutting next year. Consider Patricia Mulroy’s point about pulling fresh water from — say– my words–the Mississippi at spring flood or east Texas rivers during hurricane floods.  When/if the republicans come back to congress the likelihood of the feds sponsoring big water capital projects any time soon diminishes significantly.

Which brings us to the last two points made by Wade Miller: the importance of a water champion and the importance of research. There is no champion for water desalination on the horizon currently but curiously the National Geographic has outlined three areas for desalination R&D: Forward Osmosis, Carbon Nanotubes, Biomimetics.  They are all the major areas I have discussed on this blog. National Geographic also gives the time frame for when these research areas become ready for prime time. This sort of popularization of the big desalination R&D issues makes it easier for federal desalination R&D admins to pitch joint funding research programs with universities, private foundations and companies–and vice versa. My vote for the most important piece of federal funding for desalination R&D would be for redirecting toward desalination membrane research –the Princeton University Math solution which Makes Computer Modeling 100,000 Times Faster.

A new formula allows computers to simulate how new materials behave up to 100,000 times faster than previously possible, and could drastically speed up innovation relating to electronic devices and energy-efficient cars. Princeton engineers came up with the model based on an 80-year-old quantum physics puzzle.

It could also drastically speed up innovation related to desalination research.  Remember we are in the Golden Age of Math

Computer modeling programs played a significant part of the original work 4-5 years ago done on carbon nanotubes at LLNL that created the carbon nanotube tech mentioned in the National Geographic article above. Similarly, an appropriate role for federal labs might be to develop the membrane modeling programs, provide programmers and computing time at federal labs. Their role might be  to create models for membranes requested by government, university and corporate membrane materials researchers–who will in turn–based on the models–create new membranes in  their labs. That’s the way they did it with the carbon  nanotubes at LLNL. That’s the way they can do it with other materials. Only this time the whole process can be accelerated significantly.

My point is not new or original. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, also makes the point that better, faster, smarter computer modeling is the way to accelerate innovation

There’s lots of places to go for funding –but why not dream big? Currently the deepest pockets are at the DOE. The article above mentions energy as being a significant beneficiary of their computer modeling innovation.  DOE funding pools will come under the scrutiny of the long knives come November.  Desalination membrane separation issues are closely related to hydrogen membrane separation issues. Why not pitch to DOE funding a greatly expanded computer modeling program –using the Princeton University’s Math solution  mentioned above. There might be 20 teams. 10 for energy 10 for water desalination–modeling for 20 different energy and desalination projects around the country. Really, the USA could reinvent the whole civilized world  in five years.

If for whatever reason the DOE can’t do it then you might get some combination of the DOD, WateReUse Research Foundation and Bureau Of Rec funding to pay for 1-5 computer modeling teams. Or if the DOE could do it but just not in DOE labs then federal funds might be appropriated to Universities to fund the modeling programs for university and corporate research. Finally, if the feds are just too somnolent — an ingenious soul close to the players could get rights to the math formula, plug it into an algorithm, hand it to a couple of big iron–or massively distributed– programmers and get the software written for two million or less of programming time. Then open up shop or lease copies of the software out. Think there might be a market for a material research modeling program that’s up to 500,000 faster than brand X? That is, a materials research modeling program that would instantly obsolete every materials research modeling program in the world? Maybe both the feds and private investors could get into the act. Actually, this has been done before. In 1990, NIH launched the human genome project which they predicted would take 30 years to complete. In 1996 Craig Ventor jumped in and said he could get the job done in two years. He did. How did he do it. He developed faster software.

The important thing is that someone needs to be sure that Princeton University Math solution is re purposed–and funded– for desalination  modeling research. Now. What kinds of desal projects would be helped by better/faster/smarter modeling?  Well lets go back to the National Geographic Article. You may only be able to see two out of three areas for research: Forward Osmosis and Carbon Nanotubes but not BioMimetics. So click on the National Geographic Article to open the graphic in a new browser: Modeling for both Carbon Nanotube and BioMemetics would yield better material to create an electrical charge at the front of the membranes, better fillers for the membranes, perhaps better carbon nanotubes and protein channels–as well as numerous small details which researchers would be familiar with. As they say, the secret is in the sauce. For forward osmosis, computer modeling might create a better salt in the draw solution. That is, a salt that “draws” more water and evaporates at a lower temperature. Now understand, that carbon nanotubes and protein channels are just two of many kinds of semipermeable membranes. Researchers will want to bring others to the table. For example, I’ve mentioned from time to time that membranes of the future will need to be tunable–so as to resist different kinds of biofouling. That’s just what UCLA researchers have developed

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Researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have unveiled a new class of reverse-osmosis membranes for desalination that resist the clogging which typically occurs when seawater, brackish water and waste water are purified. The highly permeable, surface-structured membrane can easily be incorporated into today’s commercial production system, the researchers say, and could help to significantly reduce desalination operating costs. Their findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry.

The new development here is the “tethered brush layer” which is “brushed” on the membrane. This layer is in constant molecular motion. The constant motion of this layer “makes it difficult for bacteria and other colloidal matter to anchor to the surface of the membrane”.

“If you’ve ever snorkeled, you’ll know that sea kelp move back and forth with the current or water flow,” Cohen said. “So imagine that you have this varied structure with continuous movement. Protein or bacteria need to be able to anchor to multiple spots on the membrane to attach themselves to the surface — a task which is extremely difficult to attain due to the constant motion of the brush layer. The polymer chains protect and screen the membrane surface underneath.” Another factor in preventing adhesion is the surface charge of the membrane. Cohen’s team is able to choose the chemistry of the brush layer to impart the desired surface charge, enabling the membrane to repel molecules of an opposite charge.

This is a first generation success. Princeton’s computer modeling might well speed the researchers work at UCLA–so that the “tethered brush layer” of membranes would be tunable to any kinds of bacteria byo topography and chemistry and charge.

The team’s next step is to expand the membrane synthesis into a much larger, continuous process and to optimize the new membrane’s performance for different water sources.

Perhaps advanced modeling would be an appropriate way for the feds to help the the folk at UCLA. That said, it would be appropriate to check in with various research universities like UCLA before proceeding. It looks to me like their attitude is a winner.

“We work directly with industry and water agencies on everything that we’re doing here in water technology,” Cohen said. “The reason for this is simple: If we are to accelerate the transfer of knowledge technology from the university to the real world, where those solutions are needed, we have to make sure we address the real issues. This also provides our students with a tremendous opportunity to work with industry, government and local agencies.”

Finally one last question should be asked and answered.

What does accelerated membrane development have to do with, say, pumping rivers of water out of the Mississippi during spring flood. Likely nothing. But it may well be that 5-10 years from now public policy experts will start saying that the big rivers are hopelessly polluted with farm and human medicines and household cleaners. That will come because the deformities in fish and amphibians that one sees reported from time to time to time –will have moved up the food chain. We don’t currently have the tools to remedy this problem. Work in desalination separations will also provide answers to these other molecular separations–that in turn will make it possible to tap the big river at flood. Right now this is a fanciful solution to a fanciful problem but probably less so on both counts than current worries over carbon dioxide. When you have a material research modeling program that’s up to 100,000 times faster than current generation material research modeling program–you’re positioned to get solutions to even the most fanciful problems in real time.

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Recently,   a Minnesota company announced plans to use a oil derrick off the Texas coast to site  wave power energy production devices to power a desalination plant. It would serve as demonstration pilot. Desalination has never been done quite this way before. They started work in August. They’re interested in producing bottled water from shallower depths than the water harvested off the Big Island in Hawaii–where water is first pumped ashore –before its desalinated.

I think something like  an oil derrick platform would be the model that DVX Technologies should use whenever they go out to sea. The platform would house the maintenance crew– while the desalination work was done 850-900 feet below.

I have written a number of blogs about DVX Technologies in the last year or so on the idea of  using ocean pressures to desalinate water. On several occasions I have mentioned that one way to bring water ashore would be to drill a slant well from onshore (or offshore–whichever is cheaper) so that the water runs down hill toward shore. On shore, then, the fresh water could be pumped up as from a well. What’s the cost/benefit of this procedure amortized over, say, 30 years? Beats me. A good water–or more likely an oil — consultant would have the tools to figure  out the capital energy and maintenance costs.

How do you evaluate the costs?  You’d do that by comparing the costs of comparable procedures for getting water ashore.

As far as I can see, the other procedures involve various technologies for pumping water in pipes along the ocean bottom up hill to shore.

So this time I’ll discuss various power sources to pump fresh water ashore uphill along the ocean bottom from the underwater desalination plant . I’ll make the assumption that the oil companies will already have optimized the best way to lay and maintain pipe. Further, I’ll assume that the oil companies will already have optimized the best practices for installing & maintaining an offshore platform–and that their crews would be best suited for installing and maintaining a water platform. Finally I’ll assume that the rough cost of oil or gas generators to pump water ahsore is already known; that this can also be used as a baseline against which to evaluate  other  ways to power the pumps.

Oil rigs have desalinized ocean water for years– but they have done so for their own use. They don’t produce fresh water on a commercial scale. (However, except for the membrane plants themselves, the oil companies have all the skills/tools necessary to do offshore commercial grade desalination.)

Most off shore drilling rigs have diesel or  gas powered generators.

If a desal plant on the ocean floor was sited over a natural gas deposit below the ocean floor being drilled by  an oil rig…then the natural gas could be used to power the pumps that pumped fresh water ashore from the underwater desalination plant. Did you get that? This won’t happen very often–especially not in the waters off southern california where more coastal drilling is frowned on.

So how else could you power big offshore pumps onsite?  That is, without importing power to the platform by means of oil or gas.

Another way to power pumps — to send desalinized water ashore–would be with wind generators on rigs. Something like this is currently in planning in the north sea. If you read the article you’ll notice that they have all the attendant construction and installation issues resolved. However, the waters off southern California are not as world famous for wind as is the north sea.

I should also mention that it would be easy to drop a portable nuclear reactor onshore opposite the oil rig desalination plant–and run a power cable out to sea. Here’s another company. At present  its unlikely  that any kind of nuclear plant would be built in Southern California. But that could change.

So what other sources of power might be used to drive a pump?

Four properties of salt water can be exploited for energy to power pumps.

1.)The most esoteric/furthest from commercialization/expensive is R&D by which the navy is looking for  ways to turn salt water into diesal and jet fuel.

2.)Another exploitable power source is thermal conversion power plants. These are  big on shore because of new technologies especially in Utah. However, offshore the temperature differences are narrower and the opportunities fewer. But they exist. In 2008 Hawaii entered into an agreement to develop thermal conversion power plant off the Big Island.

November 20, 2008 (ENS) - Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle Tuesday announced a new energy partnership to develop a 10 megawatt ocean thermal energy conversion pilot plant in Hawaii. Electricity will be generated from the difference in temperature between the ocean’s warm surface and its colder depths.
During the Governor’s official state visit to Taiwan, she came to an agreement with the Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute and the Lockheed Martin Corporation to build the initial pilot plant in Hawaii.

The energy produced is used to desalinize bottled water for export to Japan. The water depths they are talking about +-2000 feet. It would take more research to know whether the same technology could be used for 850-900 feet ie shallower depths and lower temperature differences. For now, I don’t think the temperature differences are great enough for commercial grade energy production. But I could be wrong about that because Oasys they can exploit only 20 degree differences to produce power. The jury is still out on this.

3. Osmotic power plant might be developed to take advantage of the  salinity differences between the desalinized water and seawater to produce energy to pump  water ashore. The Norwegians are currently trying to develop this technology. Its a pilot. IBM is looking into it as well.  The technology isn’t anywhere near mature. Moreover the volumes of water needed to make energy are too large. However, this technology can be reversed. As I first mentioned in this piece from 2007 on Forward Osmosis and again this year, Oasys promises to desalinate water for US$ 0.37-0.44/m³ once fully scaled up. (That was in the Spring of 2009. By the Fall, Oasys was promising much cheaper costs.) Oasys promises to use the use the same process as the Norwegians to produce electricity only much more efficiently. Their procedures for producing desalinated water looks more mature than their electrical generation idea.

4.  Ocean pressures at 900 feet should convert  to electrical power. Trouble is I have not seen any examples of companies actually doing this.

This technology developed by Energy Recovery Inc. might  be adapted to convert the waste stream from a deep water desalination plant– into energy to drive a pump. According to this Forbes Magazine article

Competing pressure exchangers work by capturing energy in the exit water via a turbine (analogous to a waterwheel), then transferring that shaft power to a pump (waterwheel in reverse) for the entering seawater.

It shouldn’t be too tough to create an exit stream. (Think WWII sea war movie. The submarine has just been hit by a depth charge. Water hisses into the hold through the cracked hull.) You convert that water to shaft power to power a pump — to pump water ashore.

5. As used on the Texas oil derrick, wave power could be harnessed to pump water ashore. This article about wave power generation in San Francisco lists the companies under consideration.  All are in various stages of prototype. They could be used to either generate electricity to run the pumps that pump the water ashore… or pump the water ashore directly. Here is another article about wave power being used to generate power for the  small scale desalination plant for bottled water on a platform in the gulf of Mexico

Of the choices mentioned above, I think the best ie cheapest– would be  4.)Energy Recovery’s tool. It could be adapted to convert 850 ft depth ocean pressures into electricity to drive a pump to push water onshore. imho it would cost +-400k to make the adaption.

DVX  about whom I’ve done several blogs on deep water desalination currently has a ” small installation of the technology in the San Joaquin Reservoir near Newport Beach.”  (Here’s a diagram.)They’re looking to set up another test site in the near future.  They experienced biofouling problems at the first site. Now they are looking into pretreatement technologies. Here is one. They expect to license out their technology in 2010.

Finally, I should mention again that NanoH2O has a much more efficient membrane coming out in the next couple months. However, its not likely that they’ll have the membrane configured to the specs for DVX Technologies. It would be helpful if someone could find the ways/means to get some prototype NanoH2O membranes for the DVX Technologies work.

Before I get started let me show you some serious eye candy I found this past month. The noise to signal ratio for the last couple of years on global warming is running about 100/1. Here’s a very good explanation of why. Take a look at this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) graphic of mean temperatures in the USA. Notice the sudden drop off at the end?

Here’s also a NASA graph of the sunspot cycle along with NASA’s prediction for when the sunspot cycle will turn up again.. It shows we’re at a solar minimum. Here’s something more interesting. Here’s a graphic that shows how NASA’s prediction of the next upturn in the solar cycle has changed since 2004. It keeps being pushed further out into the future. That might help to explain the increasing cacophony in the global warming debate.

It may well turn out to be that carbon dioxide will turn out to be a case of correlation without causation in the global warming debate. Here is the Best Discussion of Global Warming that I’ve ever seen.

I heard that some folks were pretty discouraged after MSSC conference in January. For that reason its kind of encouraging to see a bill introduced to congress that would accelerate the pace of desalination research along the terms discussed by the water energy conference in Janaury.
US bill seeks major desalination research expansion

US Senate hearings began on 10 March 2009 into a bill on the relationship between energy and water which could have wide implications for desalination research, both in the US and internationally.

I like the US part. I’m not sure what to make of the international part.  Right now major US desalination players like GE and IBM have already teamed up with overseas players. IBM has teamed up with Saudi Arabia and a Japanese company called Central Glassto do research. GE has teamed up with Singapore to set up a research facility there. I don’t think that GE or IBM could long play the international game as they have done — without maintaining some control over their IP. But I could be wrong. Right or wong the US is going to need to hold onto IP in order to get competitive advantage to change capital flows so we can pay our bills. The proper question framed appropriately for federal state & local officials up and down the chain of command is this: How do we grow our tax base. This is the way smart state governors think.

The hearings relate to a new bill introduced by the leaders of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, Jeff Bingaman and Lisa Murkowski, titled Energy & Water Integration 2009. This seeks to order the Secretary of Energy, in consultation with the Secretary of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency, to arrange with the National Academy of Sciences for an in-depth analysis of the impact of energy development and production on the water resources of the United States.

Sounds good. No? The National Committee of Sciences will have a chance to make up for the disinterested report they put out last year.

However, more importantly for desalination, the bill seeks to authorize funds to enable the Secretary of the Interior to operate and manage the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in Otero County, New Mexico, as a state-of-the-art desalination research center. The center would develop new water and energy technologies with widespread applicability; and create new supplies of usable water for municipal, agricultural, industrial or environmental purposes.

Somebody got it right. Thank You. Now maybe in two years the US will have a dedicated desal and reuse laboratory on par with Saudi Arabia and Singapore. What’s most amazing about the bill is that the report they want produced is susposed to come out in 90 days:

If the bill is passed the Secretary of Energy would have 90 days to develop an ”Energy-Water Research and Development Roadmap to define the future research, development, demonstration and commercialization efforts that are required to address emerging water-related challenges to future, cost-effective, reliable and sustainable energy generation and production”.

I think this would be a good way to get all interested parties (including but not limited to the GOA, DOI, DOE, EPA)to release funds for various desalination and water reuse projects. The article continues:

As a priority, says the bill, renewable energy technologies should be developed for integration with desalination technologies:
# to reduce the capital and operational costs of desalination;
# to minimize the environmental impacts of desalination; and
# to increase public acceptance of desalination as a viable water supply process.

In addition, the bill wants:
# research regarding various desalination processes, including improvements in reverse and forward osmosis technologies;
# development of innovative methods and technologies to reduce the volume and cost of desalination concentrated wastes in an environmentally sound manner;
# an outreach program to create partnerships with US states, academic institutions, private entities and other appropriate organizations to conduct research, development and demonstration activities;
# an outreach program to educate the public on desalination and renewable energy technologies and the benefits of using water in an efficient manner.

I would add to this list that research be done on energy efficient cheaper to produce and maintain pipelines. The tool set for 3d prototyping is evolving faster than the materials & designs that can be used with it. As well, I would mention the OSTP report entitled “A Strategy for Federal Science and Technology to Support Water Availability and Quality in the United States September, 2007.” on the national challenges to ensure adequate fresh water supplies. The study then outlines a federal strategic plan for addressing these challenges and provides a guide for how federal agencies will be a part of this plan. I give more detail on that from a Jan 2008 MSSC blog.
I think that as part of that a helpful thing to do would be to include efficient reverse and forward osmosis membranes onto the list of strategic material research goals in the already architected NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers. Heck I’d throw in easy to build and maintain energy efficient pipelines too. And don’t forget line item funding so these projects land inbox.
Anyhow, everyone would do well to do their part make this study go through.

I mentioned in a previous desalination post a bunch of ways that renewable energy projects could be integrated with desalination projects. As well, the Oasys forward osmosis project –that I mentioned in the last post — gives a body pause:

Oasys estimates that engineered osmosis will cost US$ 0.37-0.44/m³ once fully scaled up. The startup has so far established a pilot-scale plant to test the technology by producing 1 m³/d.

That’s $431@acre foot to $542.8@acre foot. When you consider that the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is charging $800@acre ft… Oasys numbers take on a whole new meaning. In fact, those meanings cut six ways to Sunday. Oasys mentions California in their press release

The company’s patented EOTM process can produce drinking water at less than half the cost of current desalination methods. This is accomplished by eliminating the need for high-pressures used in modern Reverse Osmosis (RO) systems, thereby reducing the electricity and fuel demands by more than 90%. The result is a reduction in the economics of seawater desalination that will ultimately bring the cost of producing water from our vast oceans below the cost of conventional surface water, such as the aqueduct system used in the California State Water Project

To get those low numbers Oasys forward osmosis system has to use waste heat from sources like coal plants plants near the coast.

Now combine Oasys work with this: (Click) Here’s break through in production costs for algae oil.

A coal plant — that can also produce fresh water and carbon neutral oil…– is golden.

There will be a congressional hearing on algae oil soon — that, I think, will result in algae supplanting sequestration as the carbon capture method of choice.

But Oasys could also work well with a thermal solar power plant like the one in Nevada. So where ever you had plenty of sun above a brackish aquifer — and say –400 acres of relatively cheap land–as is available in New Mexico or West Texas — you could put up a solar thermal plant with a Oasys forward osmosis desalination plant because the internal processes are nearly identical–in fact the flash vaporization used by the thermal solar power plant to drive its electrical generators might also take the salt out of solution in the Oasys forward osmosis solution. Actually, Oasys has already talked about something just like this idea.

Here’s a couple more ideas. It may well be that some of the concentrated salts left over from desalination can be used in this hot salt battery or peak production of solar power/wind/coal could be stored as methane with a bacteria that produces it directly from water and carbon dioxide. Here’s the first paper I’ve seen which discusses how the properties of Na+ and Cl- ion in saltwater could be used to create hydrogen.

There are some cost savings there that might justify the costs of tapping deep brackish aquifers in New Mexico that are currently experiencing a big gold rush.

Finally before I take the long view, I believe that I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite energy and desalting ideas. My favorite energy idea: Its my favorite because I thought of it myself. Ha! Here goes. Here is a high school teacher dropping a lump of pure sodium into a bucket of water. Notice the nice big bang? Here’s a bit calmer explanation. How much energy would it take to convert sodium in solution Na+ to pure sodium Na. Then could you harness profitably the exothermic reaction that results from adding pure sodium to water? Beats me. But sheesh it would be way cool to convert salt water economically into power as well as energy. I mention a wild strategy for converting Na+ to Na here. I’m sure there are many more.

Ok now for my favorite desalting research idea. I first mentioned it here. As I’ve said many times, the chief end of seawater desalination R&D should be a a pipe with a semipermiable membrane on the end. The membrane should be so efficient that the water pressure at 100-300 feet of ocean water is sufficient to drive fresh water through the membrane–while the coastal current carries off the concentrate. Ideally you would have slant drilled from the coast. “Slant well” — means you drill down 200-400 feet or so and then drill sidways and up out into the ocean- +-1000 feet–depending on how steep the drop off –so the up sloping drill hole meets the down sloping ocean bed — at the point where the drill emerges from the ocean bed at 100-300 feet of water. A ship floats over the drill and drops in a passive desalter that looks like an underwater mushroom. The mushroom desalter synches with the drill head just like it would if it were an oil well. Fresh water flows through the membraned mushroom downhill to shore. The oil drilling industry already has the ships, the underwater installation and drilling technology. City of Carpinteria near Santa Barbara in California is negotiating with Venoco over their proposed Paredon Project. Venoco wants to drill down a mile or so and then drill sideways a couple more miles out into the Santa Barbara Channel for oil. A helpful provision for their contract would be a slant well for water purposes. The membranes and mushroom to make this work are not available now. But they will be in two or three years. The job for now would be to drill the well and cap it, spend two years designing the mushroom and the membranes for installation in 2011-12. Funding for the experiment could come from several different players including Venoco, the DOI, EPA & DOE. The design for the underwater mushroom would go the the firms that supply underwater oil equipment for Venoco working in conjunction with some American membrane plant designer.

Ok now for the view from eight miles high.

As I mentioned at the MSSC conference in January — everyone knows about great works of the water guys in the early 20th century. Everyone has seen the discovery channel pictures of salt water on Mars–so its not too tough to figure what will be the work of water men in the 22nd century–(or earlier if the rate of change keeps accelerating.) What’s hard to figure is the big plan for the 21st century–on the scale that dam building was for the 20th century–or desalination on Mars. The reason for this is that on the one hand we have legacy ideology from the 1960’s that holds that there are too many people, growth is bad, but it won’t matter anyway because the oceans are rising and they will drown the coastal cities. On the other hand, because of fast tracking technolgical change–perhaps more powerful than that in the early 20th century –there is a rebirth of early 20th century thinking that holds there is plenty of room for more people, growth is good and the way you enable more room for more people is to bring water and power to waterless and powerless places. Take southern california. Whether you believe rising sea levels will drown the coastal cities or whether you believe that future growth is inland over the coastal mountains to the deserts–the answer to providing water and power for the future is the same–because people will either be pushed inland by rising sea levels or pulled inland by new water and power resources. That is, prudent water managers have to either plan for disaster by providing water and energy for the day the population has to move inland to escape rising sea levels OR prudent managers will have to believe there is a better brighter future ahead and plan for it as Hoover did. Actually Herbert Hoover’s thinking involved both propositions above. He wanted to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. The genesis for the colorado river project and the hoover dam was the terrible flooding of the Colorado that just wiped whole communities in the early 20th century. When Hoover wrote the initial enabling legislation in 1922 for the Hoover dam, a lot of the technology to build the dam and create the hydropower had not been invented. We are in the midst of just such a period of extraordinary scientific and technological development. A good thing too though the problem this time is not floods but drought.

Regular readers of this blog know that while I advocate all kinds of desalination techniques–I believe the big water solution for the 21 century comes from the ocean. Therefor the goal of water desalination R&D should be to collapse the cost of desalination and transport so that water delivered from the gulf of Mexico to New Mexico or water delivered from the pacific to arizona or utah –even desalted water delivered over the cascades to eastern Oregon and Washington–is cheap enough for agricultural uses that is < than 100@acre foot. Instead of 100 million dollar desalination plants there should be just a 4 million dollar pipe you stick in the ocean. Water flows downhill to shore by way of slant well drilling. Cheap to manufacture and maintain pipelines with minimum energy pipe the water inland. What energy is needed is drawn from the sun/wind/heat or the water itself. The goal is to turn the deserts green, and increase the potential habitable size of the USA by 1/3. The USA having then created the technology could export it to the rest of the world profitably and double the size of habitable planet. Anyone who follows — not just the research–but the development of new research tools — knows that this is what’s implied by the work in the labs.

In January, 2008 I mentioned that all the candidates both Republican and Democratic mentioned the need for energy independence. The republicans, especially, made the comparison between the the call for energy independence today and the race to moon in the 1960’s and the Manhattan project in the 1940’s.

According to this article dated 3/8/09 the Obama administration takes a similiar tack.

Now energy experts and officials in the Obama administration see a similar “Sputnik moment,” urgent and global in scope, over energy use and climate change. And they want to try some new ventures, similar to efforts in the Cold War, to stimulate technological advances in energy and shift the economy away from oil and coal.

Deep in the $787 billion stimulus bill that became law two weeks ago is $400 million to launch ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Authority for Energy. It’s modeled after the Pentagon’s DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which took on Soviet technology and gave us online shopping in the process.

Needless to say, typically, it takes water to make energy and you need energy to make clean water.

On the second day of the MSSC conference back in January something that was billed as a Town Hall Meeting was held. I was reminded of that meeting in the past week because of the flood of dire water news coming out the Southwest and southeast. As well, the very interesting news that has emerged from Yale.

The point of the second day’s discussion at the MSSC conference was the relative roles of government and industry in desalination going forward. But that was overshadowed by events. That desalination got no explicit funding in the midst of the biggest government spending splurg in generations–gave people pause. What happened? imho one problem was the National Committee of Sciences Desalination Report. It was the kind of scholarly report that public policy college students might read. Or GAO officials. More likely the latter. The report recommended that government funding for desalination related research remain at current levels or about 25 million annually. This is on the level of Australia or Singapore. People generally agreed that these funding levels were not appropriate given the rising urgency of water solutions needed for the southwest in particular but also in the California and the southeast.

The Drying of the American West does a good job of telling how the west is in the midst of a long drought while population there grows. The article has a good video.Patricia Mulroy mentions that if current trends of less than 70% normal rainfall remain in effect for the next five years–then Nevada will lose 90% of the water they receive from the Hoover Dam.

Here’s another article on ongoing struggle between Florida, Alabama and Georgia over dwindling water resources in the southeast. Both the southeast and the southwest were beneficiaries of the New Deal water projects. That both are in deep trouble now–shows that the 20th century solutions to water power are no longer adequate.

I think that point was made fairly clear Friday morning. Too bad this was not made clear before the report came out.

A second point made by the report as to limits of RO efficiency was off base. We were informed that RO membranes were limited to only a 15% improvement in efficiences. (One Bureau of Rec Scientist strolled up to me during the Town Hall Meeting and stage whispered “Whoa they’re off by a factor of about 100%.” He didn’t turn his head. The man had a job to keep. We were in the presence of PC.)However, current LLNL research suggests that carbon nanotube based membranes can achieve efficiencies 80% greater than current membranes. The membranes to achieve these efficiencies have already been spun out the the llnl labs.

Then of course there’s the big news recently that the Yale spinoff Oasys:

Oasys says that it can wrest drinking water from these non-potable sources at less than half the cost of existing desalination systems by doing away with the high-pressure components commonly found in reverse osmosis systems. Electricity and fuel demands could drop by 90 per cent, it hopes.

“The only real way to significantly reduce the cost is to eliminate the need for lots of electricity,” says CEO Aaron Mandell, who is also a managing partner at GreatPoint Ventures, a Boston-based firm that invested an undisclosed amount of seed funding in Oasys.

Mandell estimates it currently costs between $0.90 and $1 to turn one cubic meter (or 264 gallons) of seawater into potable drinking water. He says Oasys’s technology can lower the cost to $0.35 to $0.50 for the same quantity.

The Yale work is forward osmosis. I first mentioned their work back in 2007. But I’m betting that part of their efficiency claims come from either the membrane of llnl spinoff porifera or the membrane of the UCLA spinoff NanoH20

According to the article Oasys Water Inc. has raised $10 million to pilot a technology.

Investors in Oasys’s $10-million funding round include Advanced Technology Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Flagship Ventures. Mandell says an additional funding round, expected to total $30-50 million, is needed to commercialize its technology on a broad scale.

The amazing thing is that private capital is available at all in these challenging times. While government has not adequately responded to the need for more water–more companies are getting funding in response to the opportunity provided by the increased demand for water. Oasys is not the only company to get finanacing lately.

The current funding comes amid an active period for venture investment in the water purification sector. Companies that received money in the past six months include WaterHealth International, a producer of contaminated water treatment technology that raised $10 million in January; NanoH20, a developer of membrane materials for water purification, which raised $15 million in September; and Quench, a distributor of water purification coolers that closed a $26 million funding round in August.

According to consulting firm Lux Research, spending on water treatment products and infrastructure is slated to rise sharply, jumping from $522 billion in 2007 to nearly $1 trillion by 2020. Researchers forecast that by 2030, the world will use 40 percent more water than today, and nearly half of the world’s population will face severe water stress.

Mandell estimates that the desalination market is at least $30 billion, but that is a fraction of the broader wastewater treatment sector.

The Dept of the Interior will get several hundred million dollars for water projects but they will mostly go for wastewater treatment–though I would think that a portion of that will go to desalinating brackish pump water from oil wells.