This desalination plants They offer a great solution (providing drinking water where there isn’t), but they also create many problems: burning fossil fuels and causing significant emissions to the atmosphere, in addition to spilling large quantities of salt water (hypersaline concentrate), which is a real poison for marine biodiversity. Nevertheless, a company from California (USA) has created a portable, modular and completely ecological desalination system that eliminates all the problems of conventional purification.
Oneka Technologies company markets three types of floating docks that act like buoys, depending on their size and capacity. The largest, called the iceberg, is 6.5 meters long, and its main advantage (like other models) It obtains the energy necessary for its operation from the movement of waves.
As the desalination float moves with the swell, it draws water through a filter and then circulates through a reverse osmosis membrane that removes salts and other small particles.
This device produces up to 53,000 liters of fresh water per day.. Dragan Tutic, founder and director of Oneka Technologies, explains that, given the modest size of the equipment used, it’s roomy enough for around 43 mid-sized homes.
In any case, it’s a modular system so you can add as many units as you need to increase throughput.
The first version was released in 2016 and has been perfected since then. One of the biggest challenges was that the equipment was able to withstand the impact of waves when major storms occurred. Tutic is the latest generation of floating desalination can withstand waves up to six meters high and can be easily disassembled and reassembled in more extreme conditions.
The equipment remains anchored at the bottom of the sea and is designed to operate with an average wave height of one meter. It absorbs the energy of the waves passing through the buoy and converts it into mechanical pumping forces. After the water is filtered by osmosis, it is pumped towards the mainland through high-density polyethylene pipes.it also uses the energy of waves in this case.
As with all other desalination operations, Oneka’s teams they also produce salt water, but in this case it is in very low concentration, The company’s president says it therefore does not cause significant impacts in the ocean.
Made from recycled plastic
Also the Iceberg model Made from recycled plastic bottles, 170,000 specifically for each device.This means that “all those bottles will no longer go to landfill or the great Pacific garbage island,” says the company president.
With due maintenance (between three and seven visits per year), each of these Iceberg-type modules It can last 15 to 20 years in active service.
Obviously, such artifacts alone are not enough to feed large populations unless many units are operating at the same time. However Oneka is already working on a wider design “on a public service scale”.It will produce ten times more water than the Iceberg model and could be on the market before the end of 2023.
Dubbed the Glacier Class, this new model is scheduled to be tested in a town of 4,000 on the coast of Barrington, Nova Scotia (Canada).
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