{"id":25376,"date":"2022-12-09T10:37:11","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T08:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/?p=25376"},"modified":"2022-12-09T10:37:11","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T08:37:11","slug":"drought-communities-desalinating-from-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/09\/drought-communities-desalinating-from-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Drought communities Desalinating from the Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine a water-maker capable of supplying thousands of litres of drinking water per day, powered by the sun, and so reliable it will operate remotely for years with just the minimum maintenance, using local labour.<\/p>\n

Dutch entrepreneurs Sid Vollebregt (right) and Reinoud Feenstra (left) are making waves around the world with their Multi award-winning innovative Elemental Water Makers<\/a>\u00a0which can do just that.<\/p>\n

Desalination takes place when sea water is compressed and driven through a membrane. In order for sea water to be pushed through the membrane it needs to be pressurised to 50 bar (the equivalent of a column of water half a kilometre tall.) The membrane has a screen\u00a0so fine it strips brine of its salt – and everything else which isn’t actually water.<\/p>\n

Elemental Water Makers remarkable energy efficiency comes from a complete re-design of the high-pressure side of the system.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ordinarily half the brine pumped into a desalinator will emerge as purified water. The other half will be ejected as waste. A key innovation of the Elemental Water Maker is that it taps into the highly-pressurised unused (waste) brine, and re-injects it back into the intake via a ‘Turbo Charger’ where its energy is used to raise the pressure of the new intake seawater.<\/p>\n

In fact, instead of drawing the full half of fresh water available, Elemental take only one-third, which results in more energised water available for re-injection, and less-saline waste – which extends the life of the membrane. Also, no chemical treatment is required for the conversion of brine to drinking water.<\/p>\n

Incredibly, this new-design reduces the energy used for desalination by 80%.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This energy saving \u00a0can be used in another way – Gravity feed: if the sea water is pumped to a reservoir sited uphill, gravity will provide the pressure required to drive it through the desalination membrane – but remember the 500 metre column? …Elemental’s pump efficiency allows that head of water to be reduced from 500 metres to just 90 metres.<\/p>\n

Often installed in the remotest places, the largest of these robust Desalinators are capable of producing enough water for 40,000 people, every day, fossil-free, using solar power energy plants which can be monitored 24\/7 from Elemental’s HQ in The Hague, Netherlands.<\/p>\n

Solar Power<\/h4>\n

Containerised desalination plants are available in a range of sizes to produce between 4,000 and 100,000 litres of fresh water every day. Everything needed for the production of fresh water – including the solar array, is included in the well designed container space.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Netherlands, Elemental’s demonstration unit which provides clean water from the North Sea has the following solar power installation:<\/p>\n