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Wave-Powered Desalination
dptalia writes, "Scientists think they've found a way to harness the energy of waves to desalinate salt water. Currently desalination is an energy-intensive process, but this new design harnesses the renewable energy of waves to produce fresh water. Many countries depend on desalinated water to support their populations, and this invention could lower the cost of water generation." Production versions of the "desalination ducks" would be about 10 meters in diameter and 20 meters long. Each would supply water for more than 20,000 people.
2,000 cubic meters per day of desalinated water from each unit. That's over 350 gallons per minute. Impressive!
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
And Australias salination problems are solved.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This could be really useful in the UK, we are getting frightening low on water during the summer months to the point where we thought that we might have to go back to stand pipes. We would have the money to build something like this and the energy to heat the water (it needs to be pretty hot to do it) - I do wonder though if it would be practical for the very poor countries because of the requirements on the heat (although maybe solar could take care of that) and the cost of building them... I wonder if it will be prohibitavely high
also "One unit should be able to produce around 2000 cubic metres a day", that's pretty amazing.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
The inventor's name is Stephen Salter. Heh.
So long as there's a Moon there'll be a power source.
I've often wondered why solar power isn't harnessed to distill seawater. It ought to be a simple matter to hook up a glass-topped insulated-on-the-bottom pyramid or somesuch with an inlet that lets seawater in (and the concentrated result back out for that matter) whenever a larger-than-average wave passes, set it up so the seawater passes over a metal plate, add some mirrors and/or lenses to heat the thing enough to create some steam, and pipe the steam out the top and over to a shaded receptacle with a non-insulated bottom (so it's heatsinked to the ocean basically) for the condensing. With a good design, it ought to be possible to do something like this so that it runs more-or-less unattended and requires only enough energy input to keep the mirrors and lenses aimed correctly as the sun moves across the sky at one cycle per day.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I do love Googles conversion function though. I didn't think it would work that one out OK but it did.
wot no sig
All floating platforms are subject to damage or loss during storms. You don't want interruptions in your fresh water supply, ever, and you especially don't want to lose it after a big storm, exactly when you need it most. This looks like a good idea in theory, but you don't base risk management on best case scenarios.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This particular type of technology could be extremely important in countries with few water sources. Say such as much of the Middle East. Israel has a single fresh water source for the entire country, the Kinnert (Or Galilee) This same freshwater sea is the water source for a great part of Jordan. Both countries have coasts on the Red Sea- and already there are massive desalinization plants there, on the Israeli side. But, what about Egypt? All the African Countries on the coast that are still pretty dry. This particular technology could also be of great use in the first world, as someone else stated, in places like England. I'm sure they aren't the only country with a water problem.
A sensible installation would accompany the floating platforms with a large reservoir to act as a buffer and prevent such interruptions.
Stephen Salter is an engineer, not a "scientist." The distinction can be blurry, but I think this is pretty clearly an example of engineering rather than science.
:)
The only reason I point that out is that I'm an engineer, and I'd like credit to go where it's due.
I've often wondered why here in Israel we don't desalinate water. Only in the small city of Eilat is this done, also for a population of about 20,000. It seems cheaper to buy drinking water from Turkey that to desalinate it.
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Could it also be that it took them 30 years to find a practical application for their wave-to-energy ducks? The small scale prototype in a wave tank is pumping air rather then water? And in arid countries with good access to sea water (Australia and Israel are given as examples) aren't the countries that would need this type of technology. In third world areas where fresh water is an issue usually lack access to large bodies of water, so we're left talking about India - are they going to be willing to fill these ducks up with fresh water (FTA, its takes fresh water to make fresh water, heated to 100C).
Even here in the Netherlands we could make good use of it, as salinization is a major problem and a threat to groundwater quality here (lots of coastline.)
Just put these babies into the ocean, stick a tube down into the ground and, presto, no more saltwater in the dunes.
I like the idea; however, there wasn't anything mentioned to the impact on the local ecosystem by releasing the extra heat and salt directly back into the ocean. What happens after a couple of years of having this duck farm and the water contains a slightly larger percentage of minerals?
Just use that Russian flaoting nuclear plant to heat the water up first...it'll work!
Wow! They'll have enough salt to last forever!
Some places mostly hot climate countries like Africa and the Middle east are in a constant desperate need of fresh sweet water...
Locksmith
2000 ((cubic meters) per day) = 117409.801 hogshead per fortnight
According to Google that is.
wot no sig
have a spare one or two on land, ready to deploy? This is a good idea anyway, since one of the ducks could fail for any other reason, leaving people thirsty. If you lose a duck to a storm, you replace it with one stored on land.
It ain't perfect, but it ain't bad either. Combine that with reservoirs (either big lake, or lots of 1 gallon jugs of freshwater at homes), and it's much better than the status quo.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
In general, it's not feasible to capture wave power. The stuff is too diffuse-- it takes too much infrastructure to capture too little energy to even pay back the cost of building the contraption.
It doesnt matter whether you use the mechanical energy to generate electricity, desalinate water, or make tea. You can't build a wave energy capture device that's rugged enough to survicve the storm, corrosion and other hazards at a reasonable cost.
As a starting point, let's take their (unsubstantiated) estimate of 2,000 cubic meters per day. A quick google shows that's worth about $1,000 to $3,000. Assuming the waves are active 75% of the time we could expect maybe $2,000 a day from this device. That's about $700,000 a year. Kinda impressive at first glance. But will that be enough to even pay for the gadget over time? Let's estimate, generously, that the device will last ten years. And that we can borrow money to build it at 5% interest. If it and the pipeline to shore can be built for $10 million, we need to pay at least approx $1.5 mil a year to make headway on the principal and interest. Plus the cost of staff and maintenance. We're still a factor of more than two away from breaking-even. And that's assuming no risks due to weather or unanticipated problems with new technology.
the renewable energy of waves
Come on, this is supposed to be a science/engineering summary of a science/engineering article. The term "renewable" should at least mean something. Bio-fuel crops are arguably "renewable." Waves simply are. Nobody needs to re-plant our gravitational interaction with the moon once we've harvested it. Swine waste methane is not the same as tidal activity. It's the article summary, for cryin' out loud. At least get the fundamental concepts behind the word choice straight. "Renewable" isn't the same as "something other than oil."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
As an added bonus, this could all be funded by selling the extracted salt to crisp companies.
Ok so they say that sea levels are going to rise dramatically in the next 100 years, which will have a major impact on the land masses that we have today and the way we live. Instead of just using this new technology to provide water for those countries that need it, use it to pump millions of gallons of extra water out of the oceans and herlp keep the sea levels down. The increased evaporation of water from the new lakes should increase cloud cover, increase rainfall, and lower temperatures. Also if we placed powerful enough water inlets in one location and maybe outlets in another we could generate our own ocean currents. Just wishful thinking, but I have wondered for years why we couldn't use solar power or wave power in Africa to pump water inland. The desalination does not have to be on the coast either - the key is to pump the water inland, once there I'm sure the creation of jobs in the desalination industry would help the ecomony...
It turns out that it isn't an easy problem to solve but there is a physicist sponsored by rotary international that is on the job with a good design (I'm sick and it's late so I can't remember even a name). With a source of reasonably hot water that does not have to be clean it can go from a trickle suitable for a village to turning out clean water in industrial quantities - even if the source is full of salt, heavy metals or bacteria. Most of it is simple UV resistant black plastic - some glass plates of a paticular geometry on the top alllow more heat in and provide a place for the clean water to condense. I'm sure google will help for the curious.
"As long as the temperature between the warm surface water and the cold deep water differs by about 20C (36F), an OTEC system can produce a significant amount of power."
was Re:This is a life saving innovation
davecb5620@gmail.com
This would also affect how these installations would scale. If multiple units are placed in close proximity, each would act to increase the salinity of the intake water of the others, making the desalinization less efficient (viable?). There is much more than testing in tank before we get to a workable, low energy fresh water solution. Seems like a good first step, though.
Could this kind of technology also be used to produce Hydrogen? Maybe both can be combined... In this way we certainly have some technology for the energy to come. Please join also the Energy2Com blog on http://energy2come.blogspot.com/ to discuss this technology!
--------- Interested in energy technologies for the future? Be welcome at http://energy2come.blogspot.com!
It is too early for costs. If you consider reality costs are variable based upon manufacturing techniques, materials used, supply, economies of scale, administrative costs, delays by regulatory groups and other things that are not immediately apparent even after construction of the first prototype. First you find out if it can be done - then you work out how to do it well for as little as possible based on better assumptions than those given above (only ten years of operating life when even desktop computers are designed to last longer?). I would certainly even question your assumption of the value of water in remote areas becuase it enables other activities that could generate money or other benefits by saving on transport costs for water.
It may be possible that is true but it is a pretty wild claim to make - what do you have to back this up? Why don't you think it is likely that the designer has considered existing structures that are built to survive for decades in waters with very powerful storms?
However, his invention is really interesting. And I really hope to see it in production.
According to Wikipedia:
It's about time. The energy efficient, low cost derivation of safe, potable water from ocean water is one of a handful of technological achievements that is urgently needed to prevent the ongoing suffering, impoverishment and deaths of a significant percentage of people throughout our planet. Here's hoping that technology can achieve this, finally, this time.
How about giving some numbers? kWh required for classic desalinisation of 1 l water vs. when using a duck?
How efficient can the insulation of the freshwater be when the central partition (in direct contact with the freshwater) acts as a heat exchanger?
Actually, I happened to see one design of solar still the other day, that was touted as both cheap and small.
The design used something pretty close to a solar panel: a flat white plastic surface, with a thick, dark-tinted, glass panel. Between the plastic back of the panel and the glass, the inventor put a black felt surface, on top of a black plastic sheet. The felt that was wetted by a plastic tube in which (very) small holes had been punched to create a drip.
The felt, the plastic sheet and the glass panel together were able to evaporate huge amounts of water, that then condensed in a small collector and was taken away to a water tank. The designer said that the total cost for this design was about US$ 50, but that was not including a photovoltaic solar panel to power a pump to bring water to the system and pump the purified water out. When the felt or the plastic sheet were too dirty to work correctly, all that was needed was to clean them of their impurities, and they were ready to be re-used. Most of the materials could could come from a recycling process, and be recycled, with a very smallish environmental cost.
Supposedly, this design was able to provide pure, drinkable water for a family of four. Of coruse, the whole thing had to be oriented south, and would work a lot better in a sunny country. I remember the system being installed in Puerto Rico to purify brackish water for human consumption, but the designer added it could also be used for desalination purposes. The main drawbacks, from what I understood, is that (a) the entire system needed to be "primed" for a couple of days before working at top efficiency and (b) that the design itself was so simple and so cheap few people believed it really worked.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
desalination ducks... Wonder if they'll use the salt to make saltine quackers...
"Wave-Powered Ducky, you're the one
That makes desalination fun!"
I know how things really work, I feel it in my gut.
It's called "truthiness."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
A few weeks ago, there was a story about a lowtech machine that could extract drinkable water from the air very efficiently and up to 600 gallons/day (even in arid deserts):0 6/212252
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/
What happened to that one? Letting the sun do the evaporation/desalination and harvesting the water later in that cycle seems more logical to me (although the costs are unknown).
Can you say rate increase?
Can you say "patronising cunt?"
Or you could just heavily fine the water companies 'til they fix their pipes, rather than letting such huge amounts of water leak away.
Yeah, because it's not like they'd just pass that fine onto their customers, who, as we know, have so much choice in who they buy their water from.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Stephen Nomore Salter.
The problem isn't running out of water, the problem is the economics of the privatised utilities.
Everyone pays a flat rate for their water so there is absolutely no reason to conserve any water at all. On the utilities side, they get paid exactly the same whether half the water is leaked out of the pipes into the ground or whether it's delivered. Maintenence then simply reduces their profits.
The solution, which will fix both problems is water meters. That way the individual household pays for every litre they pour onto their grass and BMW 3 series. The utilities also then only get paid for litres of water which are actually delivered to the customer, not for water which leaks into the ground. At the moment with flat rate water supply, the low water users are heavily subsidising high users of water, including businesses.
Scotland on the other hand has far more water than we need. How does 20p/litre sound?
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Just wishful thinking, but I have wondered for years why we couldn't use solar power or wave power in Africa to pump water inland.
Because the world has basically decided, through its inaction, that the lives of people in Africa aren't worth the expense of doing that.
The reality of it is that human life is cheap, when it's far away and somebody you don't know.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Make unusable water usable by using unusable water. Who wouldda figured.
You guys don't have water meters? That's ... interesting. So if I use 3x as much water as you, we both pay the same amount at the end of the month?
... it encourages people to order more expensive stuff than each other and thus screw everyone else).
Seems like you don't have to be Adam Smith to figure out the way that's going to work. It's the "splitting the tab" phenomenon (when you go to a restaurant for lunch and agree to split the check evenly
I generally don't have a whole lot good to say about my municipality, but I can't complain too much about the way they bill water and sewer service. They meter the incoming fresh water, and use that as the basis for charging (on a per-quantity basis) for water and sewer. They start off on the assumption that most people's incoming water ends up going down the sewer anyway, so you can approximate those quantities as being equal to each other. If you have an irrigation system, or other large water-user that doesn't go into the sewer, you can get a separate meter installed for that and they'll charge you only for the water and not for the sewer. (No idea what the meter costs or if you can only get it on new construction, but I know people whose outdoor taps are billed at a different rate.)
It's been a while since I've really studied the bill, but I think there's probably some base rate for 'service' (essentially to cover the fixed cost of the infrastructure) and then they add the consumption charges onto that. I do recall though, that the cost for sewer disposal was more, per gallon, than the cost of fresh water, which I found interesting (but not totally surprising; those sewage treatment plants don't look cheap).
To cut down on the expense of meter-reading, they bill on a 3-month cycle, and you have the option to choose predictive billing (where they average out your consumption for a year and break it up into equal monthly payments, plus some surcharge) if you want the same amount every month. The same invoice also has municipal garbage collection and recycling on it.
Perhaps the way to encourage adoption of water meters would be to sell them to people as an optional service, for those who don't consume a lot of water and want to save money? So if you base your "flat rate" on a family of 4 and their average consumption, it would make sense for any person/household that didn't consume that much water, to get a meter and switch to consumption-billing. Rather than burying the meters in the sidewalk or street, as is frequently done here (the infrastructure is mostly 50+ years old) you could use meters inside houses or apartments that sent back telemetry via RF in the metal pipes, or some other method. That would keep you from having to dig, and from having to send out meter-readers. Most of the billing could be automated.
Once you get enough people using metered service, it becomes less and less economical to stay on flat-rate billing -- because the people who remain on flat-rate service essentially have to pay for all the water that's used and not metered, including leaks and other line losses, divided up between them. The fewer ways that you 'split the check' the closer you come to having to pay for your own lunch, and the less incentive there is to be a pig. Eventually even high water users might see the advantage in switching to metered service, so as not to be paying for leaks in the lines. (And when you have all-metered service, the water co. has a reason to fix leaks.)
Seems like a bit of a no-brainer, really.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
is enabled to keep climbing...climbing...climbing...
Am I the only one who thinks pushing back all natural forms of population control in the face of mankinds inability to control its' population voluntarily is not such a good thing?
You think global warming is a concern now. Consider how bad it would get with 336 hour days!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The motion from the waves only serves to "pump" steam from heated sea-water into a condensor where the fresh-water is then pumped to shore via (apparently hollow) legs. But where does the steam come from? According to the article there is a "central section" that heats the sea water. No mention of how "wave power" plays a part in this nor is there any mention of just what, exactly, causes the sea-water to heat up. Presumably to 100C which is what the ballast water has to be "pre-heated" to in order to start the unit up.
It might work and even be more efficient than reverse-osmosis plants depending upon the source of power to keep heating the sea water. But it's certainly not "wave powered"
And then, of course, there is the problem of situation it where there are waves. Oddly enough, finding waves that are large enough to make this unit (20 meters long and 10 meters in diameter) go into motion. So you would have to put it in the open ocean, tethered close enough to land so that the water can be pumped ashore (and power pumped back out to heat the water). Even then you're likely to find that large waves are not as common as one might think.
I'd sure hate to run into one in a sailboat.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Assuming we stick this in a balmy tropical island with 70F water (21C), we'd need to raise 752,510 kg of water 79C which is 59 million kilocalories or 248 million kilojoules. That's 69,000 kilowatt hours or 235,808,450 BTU. This probably not unreasonable if you really only need to do it once a month, but it's not an insignificant amount of energy, either.
Har har, get the pun? Just plaster some greenhouses over a beech, paint the base of the unit black. Suck the resulting vapour out and condense in the seawater. You could go as far as making them float. Hell, they could be made inflatable.
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Ok, so what effects will this beast have on Global Warming? Global Warming, which everyone agrees is caused by Americans, will kill us all off in the next 20 years unless Americans drop all technology, and return to the pure life of living in a log cabin, burning logs in a fireplace to cook their squirrels.
All scientists agree that this will drive the Global Warming problem into an uncontrollable spiral, killing all life on Earth in 20 years. Such technology as this will obviously destroy the delicate balance of nature, causing unparalled degrees of destruction to the enviornment. Even a single one of these will cause unprecedent levels of damage!
And what if one of them breaks open? All that heated water inside will simple drive the global temperature through the roof!
These things should be banned on an international level (excluding developing nations like China, Syria and North Korea of course).
We could harness thermonuclear fusion power to desalinate sea water...
And let's give it a catchy name... I'm thinking "Rain"
Surely the heat source, not the rocking motion caused by waves, will be the biggest energy input into the system. Evaporation rate is primarily a function of temperature, pressure and surface area so one can postulate that the units would be more effective the larger they were. This would increase both the surface area and maximum obtainable head pressure (depth of the chamber baffle multiplied by the density of water).
What if the devices pulled deep ocean water where combustible gasses, such as ammonia, will bubble out?
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately attributed to ignorance. -Napoleon
An inflatable, sponge based still. The base of the unit is 10cm thick black polyeurethane sponge the glass is simply clear inflatable tubing.. Instead of land, you float it out on the sea. hmm, it occurs that I should patent this.
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off a ducks back. just pour saltwater on a duck's back and the feathers will filter out the salt. no need for those fancy contraptions.
Why is that a guy with the last name of "Salter" is inventing desalinization tools? Anybody?
just an analog boy living in a digital age.
Yes - the grotto uses so much water, the bunnies thought it was a good idea.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Unmentioned so far: what to do with the leftover salt. Unless you wait for 100% of the water to evaporate, you end up with highly salinized waste water. IIRC there are some desalinization plants in the Middle East or India, and significant "dead zones" in the ocean nearby. None of the indigenous aquatic life can tolerate raised salt levels.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The density of saltwater is greater then the density of fresh water, so why not put a nanotech desalination membrane a few miles down in the ocean, and let the pressure differential of the salt and fresh water to push thru the membrane? No moving parts... http://www.physorg.com/news82047372.html
Oil drilling platforms sometimes have a lot of very heavy gear in the water and winch it up or lower it down when storms approach. Would it be all that hard to have it on pylons and sink the thing? Also something that is mechanically complex to you may not be mechanically complex to a civil engineer, marine engineer, fitter, rigger etc etc. These things are not even really that big and don't have to go in deep water - they may even go where you already have structures like wooden houses on stilts in the water surviving for decades or spindly old jetties.
Can't do it because we don't have a retail price tag yet is a common argument of polititions who wish to avoid action or kill projects - but don't get sucked in and use it yourself. The place to use this argument is against people who have complex costing based upon fantasy that they treats as reality - but gently.
There have been several attempts to develop electricity generators using the tide, such as these:s /main2153298.shtml 2 -7.html;jsessionid=E3647E0B96B907DE7AF07B7FC3B0361 4 e an-energy/ .
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/04/busines
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040322/full/04032
http://www.discover.com/issues/dec-05/features/oc
I'm skeptical of the original article's device because it apparently is from "New Scientist," which recently reported on an Amazing Antigravity Device (not that I trust Discover much these days). But the wave energy gadgets have been proven to generate electricity (11kV for the third one), and you can use that for conventional desalination. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
Presumably it can't be used for cooling, though -- can't simultaneously equip the Wave Beam and the Ice Beam. 8)
As I understand it, about half the world's desal capability is located in the Middle East, mostly in Saudi Arabia, and there it's oil-powered, done by high-pressure sprays against a grating. Even in the Middle East it makes up only maybe 3% of the water supply.
Long-term, we should be looking at greatly reducing the need for freshwater by making irrigation more efficient -- it makes up about half of our demand -- and that means drip-irrigation systems and maybe gengineering of plants for salt tolerance.
Revive the Constitution.
You can't build a wave energy capture device that's rugged enough to survicve the storm, corrosion and other hazards at a reasonable cost.
.523MGD. If we blindly apply the $4/gal-day ratio above we arrive at a construction cost of about 2 million. Is it possible? Given the simple technology here, I'd say yes, or pretty close. The 100Mill figure doesn't include land or power supply, merely construction costs.
;) ). Now we are to 1.1M/year. budget in another 100K/year for maintenance as the parts for this appear to be quite simple and hence cheap. So a total of about 1.2M/yea
Your assertion is void without defining "reasonable cost".
For this post all monetary terms will be in US dollars.
Currently, the best desalination plants are running $2.5-3/1000 gallons (for seawater plants, the target market) in costs. Stated another way that is about $2.5/3.8 cubic meters.
One of these units producing 2000m^3/day means the cost of running that unit would need to not exceed $1300-1570/day on the stated output to be competitive on a simple ongoing basis versus the best the competition has to offer - a high end large scale desalination plant. Right away we are faced with a series of important questions you missed.
How large is the competition's plant?
What land surface area is required?
What are the turnkey costs for this solution verus the standard plants?
What are the ongoing costs?
Are up front capital (i.e. construction) costs included in the per-gallon costs above?
What is the market like?
Generally speaking, a 25 million gallon/day (MGD) seawater desalination costs about 100 million dollars to build. That's about $4/gallon-day in construction costs. The barrier here is that 100mill isn't chump change. 2000 m^3/day is about
Even if it cost twice as much on a gallon-day basis, you are left with a construction cost of about 4 million dollars.
WHich is easier at a "reasonable cost" estimate? Desalination plants acheive their relatively low cost by being very large. This also makes them cost prohibitive in areas that don't need 25MGD capacity. If you don't need to provide water for about a million people that big plant will be oversized. Got 40K people? Two of these units, at 4 mill apiece is a lot better than that big ole desalination plant that still needs a power source.
Most of the cost of ongoing desalination plants in operation is power. While power requirements have decreased they have done so slower than cost of the power has increased. The result is a net increase in power costs. For a plant with a similar capcity you are looking at about 400K/year in energy costs alone. Can this system beat that? First glance says absolutely. If the cost is 1/3rd, for example, you've got about 300K in annual savings you can "spend" elsewhere. Looked at another way that's 41 cents per gallon less in energy costs, or about
An additional advantage of the smaller scale of the "ducks" is that they have less salinity concentration problems. These units can be spread out over a larger area and thus result in lower salt residue to dispose of versus a decentralized plant's large amounts.
But back to construction and ongoing costs.
You stated; "If it and the pipeline to shore can be built for $10 million, we need to pay at least approx $1.5 mil a year to make headway on the principal and interest."
You need to be more specific here, for your figures are not representative of the way business does loans. A 5% interest loan on 10Mil over a short 10 year loan will run you 1.2Mil/year straight. That assumes you'd be borrowing a full 10M. The more likely scenario is that such a business would actually use a 20 year loan resulting in straight payments on the full 10Mil including PI to be under 800,000/year.
Estimating power costs at 100K/year we have so far an operating cost of about 900K/year. Staffing for this requires very few people, so figure in another 200K/year in staffing (less if you aren't in the US
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
This sounds like fake science.
Membrane processes work great and don't clog at an unacceptable rate if you adequately prefilter either with conventional media filters or larger pore membranes.
It strikes me it'd be more efficient to use bobbing duck thingies to generate the boost pressures needed for a membrane process.
Reverse osmosis or electrodialysis are still neat technologies that are good for desalination. Relatively small footprint too. The overall recovery for a desalination plant might be only 50% or less depending on source quality though, so disposal of brine is still a problem for existing plants. Underground injection, spray irrigation, and direct discharge are some of the solutions I've seen.
I'm not going to say it won't work, but yeah, it won't work.