Solar-powered desalination cuts energy costs by 90%

As 2.4 billion people face severe water shortages in the world, desalination and water-purification technologies are in hot demand – many of them invented in Israel, considered the world leader in desalination. The most common method of reverse osmosis using membranes is costly, energy-intensive, high-maintenance and environmentally problematic. It is best suited to mega-scale plants built on large tracts of high-value land near the ocean or sea and consumes enormous amount of electricity generated from fossil fuels. Then, the treated water has to be piped great distances to farms, industries and households. Israeli startup TSD (Tethys Solar Desalination) plans to revolutionize the process with a low-cost, off-grid, scalable and environmentally friendly module technology using only the power of the sun – no fossil fuels and no carbon dioxide emissions. TSD plans to have its first pilot site up and running in Israel by mid-2017, followed by possible pilots abroad. One of the four founders, Ze’ev Emmerich, tells ISRAEL21c that TSD modules are attracting serious interest in China, the United States and several other countries in Africa and Asia. “At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2015, it was agreed that water issues are going to be the biggest global challenge in the near future,” says Emmerich. “Though most of the world’s surface is covered with water, only 1 percent of that water is fit for consumption so there is enormous interest in desalination and decontamination in the developing world and in developed countries as well.” -- More...