Gulf of Mexico Gets Wave-Powered Desalination Plant 75
blair1q writes "The US Army Corps of Engineers has issued the first permit for a wave-powered desalination plant in American territory to a company called Independent Natural Resources. Waves will operate 'Seadog' pumps, which will lift water into the plant and onto a water wheel connected to a generator, which will create electricity to operate a reverse-osmosis desalination system. The permit runs for four years. Let's hope they don't harm the environment, permanently impact drilling operations, or give Rube Goldberg any crazy ideas..."
Re:Quick Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Drink it? Use it for cleaning? Any damn thing you do with water?
Many will notice rivers tend to flow towards oceans.
Just a demo (Score:4, Insightful)
"Rather than sell electricity or water, though, operators will be taking data to measure impact on sea life, the generator's performance, and the cost of operation, said Douglas Sandberg, the vice president of the privately funded company."
So it's just a demo. Only generates 60KW. Not clear if that's average or max power; probably max. On days with low surf, not much will happen.
They've been hyping this since 2004. There are better wave powered generation devices, and even the best ones are commercial flops.
oil tag? (Score:3, Insightful)
why there an "oil" tag on this one?
sure, they probably can't operate it while there's the oil issue in the gulf....though, I wonder if their reverse-osmosis filtration systems can filter out oil.....or the seadog pump that use a "wheel" (also wonder if those "wheels" are like a centrifuge)
even if it can't...send Kevin Costner in (rolls sarcastic eyes here), he'll make it work some how.
Re: the dangers of Dihydride Oxides (Score:2, Insightful)
technically, that's what a fuel cell is.
You could store the tidal energy by cracking the water H20 into H2 and O2 and then use it in a fuel cell.
But each conversion process means you lose part of the energy.
And since they need non-brackish drinking water, making it directly is more efficient.
A tiny little application brings the nuclear troll (Score:3, Insightful)
There is also no such thing as "traditional desalination" yet but a nice try at emotional manipulation there.
Do you write this for every new technology and just change two or three words? It just doesn't quite fit in this situation but looks very familiar.