THE DROUGHT-BUSTING OPPORTUNITY FOR CONCENTRATING SOLAR

Where CSP beats fossil energy: agricultural desalination; SkyFuel and WaterFX have just brought a six-month solar desalination pilot to a successful completion in California’s Panoche Water District. Here’s why thermal desalination of agricultural land could be a game-changer for the CSP industry.

Heba Hashem, February 28, 2014 (CSP Today)

"…For the last six months, heavily polluted drainage water has been stripped of the selenium and other toxic minerals that accumulate in agricultural land, and re-used in one of [drought-tormented] California’s driest counties…The pilot demonstrates the Aqua4 from WaterFX, a solar still, using Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) to supply steam to a multi-effect distillation process… WaterFX has begun to put together the commercial-sized [two 480kW CSP solar thermal collection unit plus thermal storage that will run the distillation unit and] desalinate 45 gallons a minute, or 2 million gallons a day [24-hour/day]…by the end of 2014…The trough system is supplied by Colorado-based manufacturer SkyFuel…Thermal desalination is an ideal application for CSP; using steam to evaporate out the waste...Solar desalinates at half the cost…” click here for more

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