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Coastal Wave Powered Reverse Osmosis System
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2022
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Personal Author:
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Sea Grant Program:
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Description:The 2022 Marine Energy Collegiate Competition focuses on the blue economy and sustaining the world’s island populations by supplying them with clean and renewable energy and fresh water. The team from the University of New Hampshire has developed a product that is designed to produce fresh water for remote island and coastal communities with limited access to energy or fresh water. The product is designed for quick deployment and near shore installation in these communities. The product utilizes the heave provided by ocean waves to drive a hydraulic piston. The piston provides pressurized water that is then filtered through a reverse osmosis membrane. The design resembles that of a floating-point absorber wave energy converter. It is moored to the bottom of the ocean with a three-point system to keep sway and drifting to a minimum. The water, once pushed through the membrane, is then pumped back to shore for final purification in the community's cistern or water storage facility. The UNH team's business model plan focused on supplying communities with an inexpensive and easy to install system. The system was sized for the target demographic of small coastal communities. With the UNH design product, communities can get water faster and more reliably compared to traditional reverse osmosis products. The system can provide more water for larger communities by deploying multiple units together, but at the expense of increasing upfront costs. The current design placed in 2.4-meter (8 foot) wave conditions with constant wave action for 12 hours can provide up to about 3000 L of fresh water a day in non-ideal conditions. From calculations and small-scale testing, the product will work reliably and reach the desired pressures needed to operate a reverse osmosis process. This is explained in greater detail in the remainder of the business plan.
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Sea Grant Document Number:UNHMP-TR-SG-22-17
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License:
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Rights Information:CC0 Public Domain
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Compliance:Submitted
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[PDF-1.11 MB]
