UNIDAD DE APLICACIONES SOLARES TÉRMICAS

Next generation water-smart management systems: large scale demonstrations for a circular economy and society (WATER-MINING)

Participants: TU DELFT (coordinator), SEALEAU, KWR, EURECAT, NTUA, SELIS, CIEMAT, DECHEMA, BRUNEL, UNIABDN, WaterEurope, HEXION, UNIPA, WETSUS, UAB, JIN, ACSA, ICCS, RHDHV, KVT, LARNACA, NEMO, ACCIONA, USC, JIIS, ADA, REVOLVE, ENoLL, WEI, LENNTECH, TITANSALT, ECSITE, SOFINTER, VSI, THERMOSSOL, NOURYON, FLOATING FARM, MADISI

Contact:  Guillermo Zaragoza, guillermo.zaragoza@psa.es

Funding agency: European Commission, H2020-SC5-2019-2.

Background: The project aims to face the challenge of ensuring access to clean water and sanitation by developing innovative solutions for the sustainable use of alternative water sources, including urban and industrial wastewater and seawater desalination. It considers water as a resource, a consumable and a durable good. To capture the full potential of the circular water economy, it proposes different strategies for each of these three water forms, involving six sector-specific case studies.

Objectives: CIEMAT is responsible of one of the two sea mining case studies, aiming to demonstrate that solar thermal desalination can improve the sustainability of current desalination technologies by reaching higher concentration towards zero liquid discharge, producing high quality salts and water suitable for agriculture. A living lab will be created as well.

Achievements in 2021: CIEMAT set up the demo plant at Plataforma Solar de Almería, consisting of a nanofiltration (NF) unit to pre-treat seawater before a multi-effect distillation (MED) plant powered by solar thermal energy. The NF eliminates the divalent salts from the seawater, allowing the MED plant to operate at higher temperatures and concentration, to reach higher thermal efficiency and salinity conditions near saturation. A further crystallizer should be able to obtain sodium chloride salts of greater purity from the MED brine in the absence of divalent ions. The reject from the NF, rich in divalent salts can be combined with the distillate produced by the MED plant for better value towards irrigation. The different systems have been implemented, including a large storage (300 m3) of real seawater with a chiller to dissipate the waste heat so that real seawater can be used and circulated through the systems. We also formed a Community of Practice of the case study to discuss barriers, identify required policies, assess sustainability issues and elaborate a preliminary market mapping. We organized a first meeting to discuss these matters and how to incorporate criteria based on value sensitive design in the implementation of the system.