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The World's First Osmotic Power Plant
ElectricSteve writes "Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway officially opened the world's first osmotic power plant prototype on November 24. The prototype has a limited production capacity and will be used primarily for testing and data validation, leading to the construction of a commercial power plant in a few years time. Statkraft claims that the technology has the global potential to generate clean, renewable energy equivalent to China's total electricity consumption in 2002 or half of the EU's total power production" What's osmotic power? Wikipedia to the rescue!
I wonder what environmental impacts this has, and if they will prevent these things from going into real use?
I wonder if you could use the energy to power a desalination plant and then use the fresh water to power the.. hang on... I've gone cross eyed...
Unexpect the expected!
An interesting aspect mentioned in TFA is the fact that you need two water sources, i.e., a river of fresh water that empties into a salt sea. So it would seem that they are just doing preemptively what nature would have done anyway. It actually seems like a pretty non-destructive method to me.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
If you pumped the spent water into a lake (either artificial or man-made), then the sun will do the work in retrieving fresh water from brackish water. Since the water has to essentially be isolated from other water sources to prevent ecological damage, one way you could make use of this otherwise-useless lake (whilst you're waiting for it to evaporate) is to use it as an energy reservoir. I'm not sure of the proper name, but the idea is that you store power by pumping water from the lower lake to the higher one, and then retrieve it by running it back through a turbine. Then, you use a non-base-load power source like solar/wind/etc, and hey presto, it's transformed into base-load! Of course, the problem is that this requires two adjacent lakes - plus, a whole slew of other engineering, geographic and/or financial challenges. But I'm an armchair speculator, what do I care for reality?
The power plant is at the ocean next to a river.
The river's fresh water runs into the ocean as it is. That's just how nature works. All this is doing is diverting some of the water into the power plant and mixing the water there. What they're doing is siphoning off gravity and osmotic pressure, and THOSE are the vital resources that will be depleted instead.
And what claims are those? Nuclear power is the predominant form of power in many countries and it does well. The pebble bed design is interesting, but even 70s plant designs were fine. People like to ignore the fact that coal burning plants send up far more radioactive elements in the atmosphere than even a "disaster" like 3 mile island.
What's more, there is a lot of posturing about nuclear "waste", when it is far from waste. If a byproduct is energetic enough to be dangerous, then it is energetic enough to be fuel. If it weren't for stupid proliferation treaties and unscientific environmentalists, we would be using breeder reactors to derive much of our energy form all this "waste". We wouldn't have a huge dependence on foreign oil, and possibly thousands of lives would not be in jeopardy because of wars in the middle eats.
But by all means, please keep singing your tune. There is no consequence to spouting lies like yours, no one gets hurt...
Don't worry, we'll use the power produced to run desalination plants.
What? thermody-whati-namics?
How does it seem destructive to the environment?
What they're doing is siphoning off gravity and osmotic pressure, and THOSE are the vital resources that will be depleted instead.
Typical short-sightedness. We're going to use up all our gravity, and then we'll float off into space! We've got to shut down this plant fast!
What they're doing is siphoning off gravity and osmotic pressure, and THOSE are the vital resources that will be depleted instead.
What ever will we do if we deplete the world's supply of gravity. Sure, this scheme might solve problems now, but in thirty years our children will have to deal with global floating.
That is /not/ a valid worry.
The plant is next to a river, which empties into the ocean.
Part of the nature of rivers, is that they transport fresh water easily.
Depleting a supply of fresh water, when you are on a RIVER next to the OCEAN is not only not a valid worry, it is a stupid worry that verges on the same sort of knee-jerk hysteria that lead the pumping millions of tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere because of coal burning, instead of using nuclear plants.
It's ridiculous, short-sighted, and causes more harm than good.
That's not sustainable, as they're just more efficient, not a closed infinite loop. Entropy always increases. In this house...
I hate printers.
Desalination plant will consumer more energy than the water it produces can generate, because in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
Why is it that every time anything power related is posted to /. there are a bunch of people who suggest perpetual motion machines? What happened to /. being for nerds? Nerds would know perpetual motion when they see it, and know that it's not possible. This is the fourth comment I've read in this thread that has fallen foul of this so far.
I hate printers.
expense: nuclear power costs very little. CHECK. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html
operating life: nuclear power stations have a long life span, plants built in the 60's are still going. CHECK. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf08.html
ouput: do i even need to provide a reference on this one? nuclear power runs whole nations such as france.
it would seem good sir, that you are the one spreading bullshit. I call you out on your anti nuke nonsense, you know nothing about the subject past what greenpeace has shoved down your throat.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I was skeptical of the numbers, so I looked around to figure out how much energy we're talking about here. This link discussing desalinization is pretty useful... what we're talking about here is a desalinization plant run in reverse.
The short answer: 0.66 kcal (2760 joules) per liter of salt water converted to fresh water, so you'd get the same order of magnitude of energy *back* with an osmosis plant. The Mississippi river flow rate is 17 million liters per second at New Orleans, so the maximum possible energy output is 47 GW!
I don't see any obvious efficiency-loss factors here: it should be possible to do this pretty efficiently.
Another way of looking at the problem: the osmotic pressure difference between fresh water and seawater is 28 bar, which is equivalent to 280 meters of hydraulic head. That's roughly the same pressure gradient as is found across the Hoover Dam.
Now, the technical challenge of building miles and miles of carefully-folded osmotic membrane, and keeping it clean, is a bit daunting. But in theory, it should work!
Oh wait, Statkraft? Gosh, I thought they were talking about something important for a moment there.
Although I like this idea. Won't it just deplete our supply of fresh water? If we're constantly running our fresh water through a membrane into salt water, won't our "fuel" of fresh water run out?
Really, this is what passes for insightful these days?
Every time it rains, the rain is composed fresh water that was evaporated from the ocean and desalinated in the process. That process has occurred for millions of years, and will continue for the foreseeable future, no matter what we do. All the fresh water that gets salinated on its way through this plant would have been salinated anyway, when it entered the ocean.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Nucular power ain't safe if there're terr'ists that gonna blow it skyhigh or steal fuel to make a dirty bomb.
If it weren't for the U.S. authorities clever detective work we'd a had another 9/11 on our hands.
I think a big part is that its been working and practical for 30 years while no new plants have been built, and that many feel its been held back from development by the NIMBY masses. If more intelligent and less fearful handling of nuclear power had existed in the past we might be in better shape than we are now. While I don't agree with the grandparent that pursuing other alternatives isn't worthwhile, I do feel that nuclear power is a strong component of a sustainable future energy strategy.
I imagine this particular technology will be economical, useful, but limited in its implementation, just as hydroelectric power is. Just as with hydro power, the ultimate power source is the evaporation, vapor movement and rain caused by the sun -- though I can't claim to be certain, I'd imagine you could predict now the total amount of power available from this, and I'd imagine it is significant but no panacea. This is the general problem I and other nuclear proponents see: not that "clean" power technology is bad or boring, but that current concepts of wind, solar and tidal seem incapable of meeting current demand -- anything that doesn't meet current demand is unlikely to be solely used if alternatives (such as nuclear) exist, since the public would rather not be inconvenienced.
To counter your objections:
1. The toxic material can be reduced significantly by reprocessing the fuels. This poses a proliferation risk, but France and other countries have managed to do so for years without losing any material. It was banned by executive order by Carter, an order that should be rescinded. Also, interestingly and amusingly, Yucca Mountain is only 10 or 20 miles from an old nuclear test site, making the objections to the storage site seem less based on reality.
2. As we continue to operate older and older plants this is bound to be a problem. Extending the operating life past what they were designed for is bound to create safety trouble, but new ones have been impossible to build for decades, and replacing them with coal plants is not better in my mind. New construction and a renaissance in safer plant design (pebble beds are particularly impressive) can mitigate a lot of risk. Also, while the safety concerns are real and significant, and shouldn't be downplayed, I think the general public overestimates the danger -- Three Mile Island released no radiation and showed the validity of safety precautions.
Last time I looked France even had a 40+ year old tidal hydro power station near Le Havre as well as a wide variety of other power plants. Try harder.
France consumed 447.27 Billion Kilowatt-Hours in 2007, but produced 542.41 Billion Kilowatt-Hours, 430 Billion Kilowatt-Hours were produced by nuclear power plants. They export electricity, but nuclear alone essentially covers their consumption. "France runs on nuclear power" would be an accurate statement.
In that post you provide one fact in one sentence, and it's nit-picky and deceptive. You then proceed to argue as though anyone who reads about the topic or your posts agrees with you. This is in stark contrast to the obvious evidence that the GP has read on the topic (the references provided), and the fact that you have about five people arguing against you.
I read your post because in my reading on the topic I came to the conclusion that nuclear is a great idea that's mostly opposed by antiquated concerns about accidents and waste. But, my curiosity was piqued when I saw an argument about something else, and figured that you might have a good point (i.e. obviously nuclear isn't taking off so maybe there's more validity to counterarguments than I am aware of). But I was sorely disappointed by the lack of references, explanations, or basic consistency or logic. You do sound as though you know enough that you could formulate a good opposing position if you weren't trolling though.
Whilst I agree with your comment that it won't deplete fresh water, your implication that it won't have a significant environmental impact is 'ridiculous, short-sighted, and causes more harm than good'.
Marine ecology is actually highly sensitive to salinity in the water - and this process increases relative salinity in the water. Whilst this won't affect the volume of fresh water available for human use, it will have significant impact on marine life living in the unique ecosystem that exists at a rivers mouth.
Rivers typically also wash a huge amount of nutrients into the ocean (from runoff, natural effluent and the like) - I have no idea how / if these plants will affect these nutrients, but as anyone who has ever fished at a river mouth will know, salt water fish follow that leading edge of 'brown' water to feed off the food washed down by it.
There will be an impact and - similar to Australian plans to pipe fresh water from parts of Australia with plenty to those parts with very little - there seems to have been very little analysis into the impact on marine ecology, and until that has been done, one can't say there won't be any impact. Why do people forget the fishies?!
depending of course how much fresh water you take
No, not depending on that at all. The fresh water used, if not taken by the plant, just goes directly into the ocean to become saltwater anyway. And WTF are you talking about with this "downstream" thing? There's nothing downstream from the mouth of a river...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Desalination plant will consumer more energy than the water it produces can generate, because in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
Why is it that every time anything power related is posted to /. there are a bunch of people who suggest perpetual motion machines? What happened to /. being for nerds? Nerds would know perpetual motion when they see it, and know that it's not possible. This is the fourth comment I've read in this thread that has fallen foul of this so far.
Alas, not all nerds know a joke when they see it...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
This is all being built next to Oslo's Fjords....
No wonder Slartibartfast won an award for them!
Last time I looked France even had a 40+ year old tidal hydro power station near Le Havre as well as a wide variety of other power plants. Try harder.
79% of electricity produced in France is produced in nuclear reactors.
http://www.planete-energies.com/contenu/nucleaire/production-consommation.html
Another source says that out of all energy consumed in France (including fuel for cars and such), 44% is of nuclear origin.
Maybe it is not correct to say that nuclear power runs the whole nation, but the nation sure wouldn't run without it.
But one of the problem with this, is showing up RIGHT NOW. France got so reliant on one type of nuke, that right now, they have to shutdown a number of nukes (emergency fixes), so are currently buying power from areas all around them. At this current moment, France is importing electricity. We need to get nations to change their energy matrix. In particular, nations need to be encouraged to NOT do more than 1/3 of a single type of power. Think about China with dependency of 77% on coal and 10-15% on Natural Gas. or America with Coal at 48% and Natural gas at 19%. All these nations have such dependency on ONE form of energy that it is expensive to change.
America and China are fighting having to drop their fossil fuels because we are so dependent on this. If real issues (not the hysteria) ever show up on Nukes, then France will be forced to move away. And that will be interesting.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's because of the way you do it. Every single of your nuclear plants is most probably completely different from all the others, maintenance is also probably done by many different companies... every new plant is built like it was the first one you ever built, and every plant is maintained like it was the only one you had, so you never make economies of scale (but each politician who builds a plant gets to please a friend's company, yay).
NB: I'm just guessing for Ontario, based on how things are often done in North America and observations from an uncle whose job is to check the safety of nuclear plants.
I think an osmotic power plant is the lamest type of power i can think of.
Fusion is the only way i can see it going, really if we are going to be great conquerers of the galaxy, and fly around in Millennium Falcon type spaceships.
Anyway, Fusion is the only way to go because, we will either fix the problem, or maybe blow ourselves up.
It will be a race between ITER and the LHC.
Between explosion and implosion.
Maybe we should hook.. them,. together?..
^mtrl drtw
Nope, it is not even close. Nuclear power produces base-power, it can not produce peak-power. Most electricity is used during peak hours where you need electricity produced from sources than can be turned on and off during the day. Currently only oil and coal have that ability. Some nuclear plants can at best have the turbines disengaged letting power waste, but you can't just turn them off.
Sweden similarly produces more electricity than they consume, but if Denmark replaced their coal-plants with windmills and nuclear power, major parts of Sweden would have a brownouts every single day during peak-hour, because in reality Sweden is buying coal-based electricity to fill the holes hydro and nuclear power can not, and due to an environmental policy of not building power-plants based on fossil-fuels they are entirely at the mercy of more pragmatic neighbours.
For the umpteenth time: this is irrelevant. What is dangerous about radiation poisoning is its concentration, not its absolute value. Our bodies, and pretty much every life form on the planet, has evolved with the ability to withstand a certain amount of background radiation. If you dilute the radiation enough, the problem will go away. So stop saying that the total amount of radiation released from a coal power plant makes it more dangerous than waste from a nuclear plant.
You may claim that, at nominal conditions, nuclear plants are cleaner than coal plants. You may even claim that nuclear waste does not give the same problems as coal combustion products. But claiming that coal power causes are more dangerous than nuclear power from the point of view of radiation poisoning is nuts.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Actually, I'd rather think of the bees, but then there are already too many sons of a bee ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's merely the first with a proper marketing scheme... :p
Since 2005 a 50kW test installation has been working in Harlingen, the Netherlands. This is a POS (pressure retarded osmosis) installation just like the Norwegian one. A 10kW RED installation has been installed not 20km away in the Afsluitdijk barrier dam.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TGK-4MDGP8H-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1111993059&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=a85c6a42fb58101cbda1cb384456dd18
Most electricity is used during peak hours where you need electricity produced from sources than can be turned on and off during the day. Currently only oil and coal have that ability.
And hydro. Which can also store surplus base power (by pumping water uphill).
Hydro is better than Coal at providing for swinging demand. Hydro just turns the tap to a turbine and stores the energy (unless there's and overflow).
Nuclear power produces base-power, it can not produce peak-power
For interest sake, peak power is almost removed in some countries due to differing costs of electricity. You will be surprised how much industry (big and small) is started up at non-peak times.
If you dilute the radiation enough, the problem will go away. So stop saying that the total amount of radiation released from a coal power plant makes it more dangerous than waste from a nuclear plant.
Actually, the standard radiation protection models do *not* assume that radiation is only dangerous beyond a threshold, which is why accidents like Chernobyl have very large numbers of fatal cancers predicted (~10000). Most of these will be in people only exposed to small doses, but the exposed population is huge. Nobody offsite from Chernobyl suffered from acute radiation effects, IIRC, just delayed effects such as cancers (particularly thyroid).
Nuclear power produces base-power, it can not produce peak-power. . . . Currently only oil and coal have that ability
I don't believe that coal is considered as a good candidate for turning on and off rapidly in order to meet peak power demand and oil is pretty expensive compared to most other energy sources. Around here (northern Illinois) most of our base load is met by coal and nuclear and most of the peaker plants are natural gas. Looking forward, solar has a potential for providing a significant peaking capacity in the cooling season, when A/C loads match solar availability pretty well. Also, I'd bet that most electricity is not used during peak hours, unless you stretch the definition of peak hours to a larger part of the day than is usually brought to mind by the term "peak".
It takes a very long time to start up a large boiler and there are very serious thermal fatigue problems caused by large numbers of shutdowns and startups. The workaround for this is to just keep on shovelling in the coal even when you don't need the electricity. It's less coal than if it was running at full capacity, but coal fired power stations are really a base load power source and not very efficient for peaks.