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Pitch

A scalable climate resilient system that taps into hard or sea water to provide fresh water and energy and saves from brine disposal issues.


Description

Summary

 

Extremely beneficial for nations with coastlines and shortage of fresh water and electricity and developed nations exiting and having to close down heavy investments in coal and fossil fueled plants.

This provides for sustainable water and near zero carbon free energy for electricity generation supporting more electricity based transportation globally. protects from drought & desertification  issues and also from over flooding issues that are increasingly threatening nations globally.

Scalable from KW to thousands of MWs of energy generation, the system uses no power or chemicals and saves environment from brine disposal issues. The total costs of our water is around $0.55 per cu m and total cost of power is around around 2 cents to 3 cents per kWh. We sell units for quality water to residences and commercial usage in major cities in India and the power system  is tested with Coal-exit nations  Large scale water systems are for existing and new desalination plants which's in thousands


What actions do you propose?

Provide existing and new desalination plants with the system that provides fresh water and generates power without having to use power or chemicals or waste water or dispose brine in the seas.

This solution is capable of providing fresh water from very hard water or in case of water reuse from industries like breweries and other water intensive entities. It also can provide for water reuse of agricultural runoffs which is another area of water waste.

The system naturally treats the hard or sea water from few thousand liters per day to a few million liters per day. The water being pumped uses  power either from the grid or we could provide our grid free renewable energy pumps for the water pumping.

The water so pumped is led through a series of naturally processed and coated filters – a membrane free system, to remove the salts and other unwanted elements to provide for fresh water. The waste from this system is collected, which is full of concentrated salts, led to another proprietary processing system and converted into fuel which can be used in thermal plants now fuelled by coal or natural gas, but has near zero carbon.  The fuel can also be used for communities or residences through specially designed furnaces to provide for distributed power.

The systems would be provided as retrofits to existing desalination plants that saves huge power and other costs which is close to 50% saving in the total costs. New Water-Energy-nexus plants - WEN plants could be located near coastlines which carry a major percentage of a nation’s population and provide for the vital water and energy.


Who will take these actions?

We provide for

  1. Complete systems on turnkey basis
  2. Our EPC partners in various countries will provide for installation and commissioning
  3. Our O&M  partners would provide for logistics and support of water processing and fuel processing  
  4. We will also train a network of people to provide for O&M in the distributed model for nations in Least developed and small island nations.
  5. ·We would provide the necessary natural agents through our logistics partners globally for sustained O&M and we are keen to empower women in this network


Where will these actions be taken?

Actions will be taken in each individual city or town or village based on the scale of the system and the availability of hard or sea water.

Actions can be taken to provide a half wheel structure of distributed energy generation along the coastlines which would have their hubs on the coast and the transmission lines could spoke out to various villages, cities and towns in providing both water and electricity.

The network of EPCs and trained O&M network of women provide the necessary support to the entire system and even electricity charging stations could be manned by women to provide for their families.

Providing these systems in a hub and spokes system would enable the water and power from abundantly resourceful coastlines – without affecting the environment,  be made available at costs close to existing resources. It would be a huge win to consumers and also to the utility providers. Such distributed systems may affect some providers and their related logistics companies who move huge amounts of coal or other fuels to places of power production. It is a win for power plant providers as they need not search for new locations with water availability as here we have both water and energy source in one place along coastline in environmentally friendly manner. It reduces the GHG emissions in a big way as there are very less emissions from this platform.


How will these actions have a high impact in addressing climate change?

The energy from this platform being near zero carbon system, the GHG emissions is very low and is a solution for coal exiting nations looking for new, reliable and safe energy sources that are priced between coal and natural gas. They can be used with slight modification in existing thermal plants saving hugely on infrastructure costs. 

With climate change, fresh water is the need, be it drought stricken or flooded environments where people reside. Our systems can provide fresh water for nations with coastlines, at very low costs, without power or chemicals usage, which could be used for drinking, agriculture, industrial and other needs enabling economic growth. It enables mitigation of water and energy crisis in these areas and provides for better adaptation and resilience.

It also supports in subsistence agriculture and reduces migration due to shortage of water food and energy, thereby providing better security and path to prosperity in these areas of deployment.


What are other key benefits?

The other key benefit is to enable nation s to support major electricity based transportation at costs close to or less than fossil fuels per Km, which leads to major benefits in air, water quality and major infrastructure change that benefits each nation as most spend a large portion of their GDP on fuel transport. This power generation from sea water that is not from wave or current or tides, enables good amount of electricity generation for residential and industrial purposes and also for transportation that is now heavily fossil fueled with negative impacts on the climate.

The added benefit is ease of installation of scaled up plants due to its modular structures. The other key benefit is in its location flexibility based on provisioning of water and energy needs even in grave conditions of floods or drought.  Could provide this system as mobile unit or a floating unit along the coast.


What are the proposal’s costs?

The costs are dependent on two factors water hardness and the amount of water needed and the systems costs are less than half of existing systems and the O&M costs are also less than half of existing systems as power is not required.

The energy system is priced closer to coal per million BTU and provides for clean electricity that has carbon content closer to hydro systems. 

Economics and financing: We are financing our platform scale up and testing (through independent test centers) with various government grants. Our water systems are already tested independently and are being sold in residential and commercial markets where water quality is very poor and existing systems like RO are not cost effective. In the industrial water segment, we would provide scaled up systems in India. We are working on providing these systems to least developed and small island nations through various climate change funds and other global institutions like World Bank and others. With certifications from North America, we would focus on providing the scaled up systems to more than 10000 existing desalination plants which would bring them huge value in way of savings from power used for existing plants, savings on water wasted with brine.  Our systems (with adapted natural agents) scale up from 2000 liters per day to few million liters per day. The price point of desalination water being processed now is close to $2 per 1000 liters and we would be able to provide the same at $0.50-$0.60 per 1000 liters, which is on par with pipe parity.

Our go-to- market strategy is to provide these systems for fresh water to various sectors from residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural and urban utility needs. Existing and new desalination plants are our target market for scaled up systems

Energy systems would be provided after testing and certifications with right IP protections to nations in Europe that are moving out of Coal, provinces in Canada, South East Asian nations.

 


Time line

The project is in various stages with some being subject to testing and certifications while other are in the process of being commercialized. The timelines of installation and commissioning are very short in months compared to years taken for desalination plants for fresh water or even the energy plants for thermal energy. Feasibility: The process and its ingredients are trade secrets and we are in the process of patenting the processes to protect the IP globally. We would be able to demonstrate the system using the Boston area sea water in MIT, if needed. The sea or hard water is filtered and the filtered water is led through a series of natural absorbents to obtain salty water where sodium is abundant. The salty water is led through a series of cascaded filters that have a set of natural coatings (non-chemical, non-RO) on them.

This removes the salt from the salty water and fresh water is obtained. Depending on the quality of water required, this process is repeated and we can provide reduce sea water TDS from 35000 to 100 in a few minutes. The brine from the first and the second filtration processes is led to a common collector. The brine with those added natural agents is led through a transformation process which yields abundant energy rich fuel with very low carbon which would be provided to various nations that are going into energy change from Coal. We are looking to work with MIT and few other universities and testing centers to refine the end energy product for scaled up energy platforms that could fuel existing or closed down coal plants with clean energy. Priced to have near zero carbon emissions and zero methane emissions.  We are working with various government agencies globally to provide financial support to scale up and demonstrate for commercialization of larger systems.

Timelines for water and energy are in the range of 5-15 years in meeting the market  demand as various nations are seeking new technologies to prepare for coal exit.


Related proposals

The proposal could also be linked to the area of Energy supply.


References

IMPACTS:

The advantage of distributed water and energy systems is to adapt itself to usage loads.  Low costs enable major population centers be able to benefit from the coastline for fresh water and energy. Systems could be scaled up or down based on the population requirements. Presently water to major urban centers are tapped from rivers and run for hundreds or sometimes thousand + miles costing heavily in infrastructure and also availability. The water source could dry up as it happened in California snow peaks or other areas due to climate change or other extreme weather events leading to shortage of water and hydropower, A system that could provide for water and also provide power at costs very close to river water system or hydropower would be extremely useful and beneficial.

Providing these systems in a hub and spokes system would enable the water and power from abundantly resourceful coastlines – without affecting the environment,  be made available at costs close to existing resources. It would be a huge win to consumers and also to the utility providers.