Combined energy and water system could provide for millions
Many highly populated coastal regions around the globe suffer from severe drought conditions. In an effort to deliver fresh water to these regions, while also considering how to produce the water efficiently using clean-energy resources, a team of researchers from MIT and the University of Hawaii has created a detailed analysis of a symbiotic system that combines a pumped hydropower energy storage system and reverse osmosis desalination plant that can meet both of these needs in one large-scale engineering project. The researchers, who have shared their findings in a paper published in Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments, say this kind of combined system could ultimately lead to cost savings, revenues, and job opportunities. The basic idea to use a hydropower system to also support a reverse osmosis desalination plant was first proposed two decades ago by Kyoto University’s Masahiro Murakami, a professor of synthetic chemistry and biological chemistry, but was never developed...