Desalinated Water
Oceanlinx WEC devices have the potential to produce fresh water by generating high pressure sea water and converting it via a Reverse Osmosis (RO) system. The major advantage is that only fresh water is pumped ashore, while the brine is easily discharged around the device through local wave, current, and wind action, and the use of special outlets to allow adequate mixing with sea water.
In typical RO onshore plants, only 1/3 of the total sea water pumped to shore is converted into fresh water, the remaining 2/3 of the volume being pumped back offshore as concentrated brine. As a result, significant energy savings could be achieved by using Oceanlinx's WEC devices rather than conventional systems. An additional advantage is that, rather than one massive desalination facility on-shore, multiple Oceanlinx arrays can be spread along the coast to provide a fresh water supply tailored to the needs of coastal communities.
In principle, the use of a single Oceanlinx greenWAVE or blueWAVE WEC device for desalination, coupled with the provision of power from the grid to balance the energy supply during wave down-times, can potentially provide 3 million litres of potable water per day (3,000 cubic metres). This will be enough to cover the needs of approximately 3,500 households, under the assumption that a state-of-the-art RO system requires 3.5 kWh to pressurize 1m3 of seawater.
Desalination Process