World’s first salt power plant to be built at Tofte – a new world industry coming?

In the 1970s the Israeli Sidney Loeb developed membrane technology for desalination of seawater and discovered a possible new method for power production. Norwegian Statkraft is now building the first prototype of a salt power plant. The innovation has already attracted a lot of attention in the international energy community. Many countries have ongoing research: Korea, USA, Japan, the Netherlands.

Salt power is possible wherever fresh water runs into the sea – provided the sea is salt enough. In the future waste water from cities may be clean enough to be used as the fresh water source.

The global technical potential for salt power production is estimated at around 1600 TWh, including around 200 TWh in Europe and 12 TWh in Norway – or 10 per cent of Norway’s current power production. A power station the size of a football stadium could produce power for about 10000 households. It could be hidden in the terrain or submerged, and is environmentally neutral.

The principle behind salt power is the natural process of osmosis. In an osmotic power plant, sea water and fresh water are separated by a membrane. The sea water draws the fresh water through the membrane, thereby increasing the pressure on the sea water side. The increased pressure is used to produce electricity by a pressure exchanger. Special membranes are needed.

Södra Cell Tofte is cooperating with Statkraft.

Statkraft hopes to run a commercial – no subsidies – salt power installation by 2015.

18.11.2009: Next week the first plant will be opened at Hurum. The power output is very small – about what you need to make yourself some coffee – but maybe this is the start of something big? Many cities the world over have rivers running into the sea!

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