Ocean Energy in Belgium - 2019

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Wave Energy: a Pacific Perspective

This is the author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by The Royal Society and can be found at: http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/.This paper illustrates the status of wave energy development in Pacific Rim countries by characterizing the available resource and introducing the region‟s current and potential future leaders in wave energy converter development. It also describes the existing licensing and permitting process as well as potential environmental concerns. Capabilities of Pacific Ocean testing facilities are described in addition to the region‟s vision of the future of wave energy

Exploring renewable energy powered reverse osmosis desalination plants in South Africa: a costing analysis of Reverse Osmosis desalination plants powered by renewable energy and their potential for South Africa

The desalination process requires large amounts of energy, either in the form of waste heat or grid electricity. If conventional grid electricity sources are used to power desalination plants, the burning of fossil fuels will contribute towards the release of greenhouse gasses

Conceptual design and numerical analysis of a novel floating desalination plant powered by marine renewable energy for Egypt

The supply of freshwater has become a worldwide interest, due to serious water shortages in many countries. Due to rapid increases in the population, poor water management, and limitations of freshwater resources, Egypt is currently below the water scarcity limit. Since Egypt has approximately 3000 km of coastlines on both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, seawater desalination powered by marine renewable energy could be a sustainable alternative solution, especially for remote coastal cities which are located far from the national water grid. The objective of this research work is to evaluate the feasibility of a floating desalination plant (FDP) concept powered by marine renewable energy for Egypt. A novel design of the FDP concept is developed as an innovative solution to overcome the freshwater shortage of remote coastal cities in Egypt. A mobile floating platform supported by reverse osmosis (RO) membrane powered by marine renewable power technology is proposed. Based on the abundant solar irradiation and sufficient wind density, Ras Ghareb was selected to be the base site location for the proposed FDP concept. According to the collected data from the selected location, a hybrid solar–wind system was designed to power the FDP concept under a maximum power load condition. A numerical tool, the DNV-GL Sesam software package, was used for static stability, hydrodynamic performance, and dynamic response evaluation. Moreover, WAVE software was used to design and simulate the operation of the RO desalination system and calculate the power consumption for the proposed FDP concept. The results show that the proposed mobile FDP concept is highly suitable for being implemented in remote coastal areas in Egypt, without the need for infrastructure or connection to the national grid for both water and power

Towards sustainability in water-energy nexus: Ocean energy for seawater desalination

Seawater desalination is an important option for addressing the world's water supply challenges. Current desalination plants use enormous quantities of energy and cause a number of environmental issues. Renewable energy options, mostly solar and geothermal systems, have been examined in detail to supply the energy needed for water desalination. The co-location benefit of energy derived from the ocean to power seawater desalination processes is appealing. However, the promise and potential of ocean-based power generation for desalination systems has not been investigated in detail. The development of such systems has been limited due to technological and economic limitations of energy harvesting and transport as well as device maintenance under water. In this paper, we review the state of the art of ocean energy in desalination. It explores different sources of energy from the ocean that include electricity generation, as well as mechanical force and thermal energy and salinity gradients that can also be directly harnessed for powering the desalination processes. We also examine recent advances in scaling up for commercial deployment, and discuss relevant cost, environmental and social concerns. The great potential of ocean energy for seawater desalination in terms of diverse energy forms, flexible integration methods and various deployment strategies can provide important environmental, water and social benefits for seawater desalination, thus promote sustainability in water-energy nexus. The use of ocean energy in desalination applications could benefit the future development of ocean energy technology in renewable energy sector