Ocean Oasis’ Gaia system has been designed to make use of wave energy to desalinate water.
Ocean Oasis
Plans to make use of marine power to desalinate water obtained an extra enhance this week, after a Norwegian agency offered a system that can be put via its paces in waters off Gran Canaria.
In a press release Monday, Oslo-headquartered Ocean Oasis stated its wave-powered prototype gadget, which it described as being an “offshore floating desalination plant,” was known as Gaia.
The plant — which has a top of 10 meters, a diameter of seven meters and weighs roughly 100 tons — was put collectively in Las Palmas and can bear testing on the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands.
Ocean Oasis stated its expertise would allow “the production of fresh water from ocean waters by harnessing the energy of the waves to carry out a desalination process and pump potable water to coastal users.”
The firm stated the event of its prototype had obtained monetary backing from a spread of organizations together with Innovation Norway and the Gran Canaria Economic Promotion Society.
The major investor in Ocean Oasis is Grieg Maritime Group, which is headquartered in Bergen, Norway.
Desalination
The Canary Islands are a Spanish archipelago within the Atlantic Ocean. According to the Canary Islands Institute of Technology, the islands have been “a pioneer in the production of desalinated water at affordable cost.”
A presentation from the ITC highlights a number of the the explanation why. Describing the Canary Islands’ “water singularities,” it refers to a “structural water deficit due to low rainfall, high soil permeability and aquifer overexploitation.”
While desalination — which multinational power agency Iberdrola describes as “the process by which the dissolved mineral salts in water are removed” — is seen as a useful gizmo in terms of offering ingesting water to international locations the place provide is a matter, the U.N. has famous there are important environmental challenges linked to it.
It says that “the fossil fuels normally used in the energy-intensive desalination process contribute to global warming, and the toxic brine it produces pollutes coastal ecosystems.”
With the above in thoughts, tasks seeking to desalinate water in a extra sustainable manner will grow to be more and more essential within the years forward.
The concept of utilizing waves to energy desalination just isn’t distinctive to the challenge being undertaken within the Canaries. In April, for instance, the U.S. Department of Energy revealed the winners of the final stage of a contest targeted on wave-powered desalination.
Back on the Canary Islands, Ocean Oasis stated it could be seeking to assemble a second set up after testing on the PLOCAN facility had taken place. “In this phase, the prototype will be scaled with the capacity to produce water for consumption,” the corporate stated.
While there may be pleasure concerning the potential of marine power, the footprint of wave and tidal stream tasks stays very small in comparison with different renewables.
In information launched in March 2022, Ocean Energy Europe stated 2.2 megawatts of tidal stream capability was put in in Europe final 12 months, in comparison with simply 260 kilowatts in 2020.
For wave power, 681 kW was put in, which OEE stated was a threefold enhance. Globally, 1.38 MW of wave power got here on-line in 2021, whereas 3.12 MW of tidal stream capability was put in.
By manner of comparability, Europe put in 17.4 gigawatts of wind energy capability in 2021, in response to figures from trade physique WindEurope.