Desalination Using Just Sunshine, Wind And Seawater

This amazingly simple and gorgeous utility scale solar-powered desalination plant also functions as a naturally cooled outdoor ampitheatre.

Paton's huge renewable desalinator, the Teatro Del Agua is explained by Paton in this youtube video. Paton describes how the project engineering works, and bears witness that solutions to water also solve the problems of the planet.

Grimshaw, the architects responsible for the beauty of the design says that the result is the world's first harbor-side development that is entirely cooled and irrigated with renewable technology.

The entire structure is orientated to the prevailing northeasterly wind off the seacoast, exploiting the natural resources of Spain's Canary Islands, but any seashore location with wind coming off the sea would work the same way.

It consists of a gigantic honeycomb lattice, with smaller grids (pink) in each section of the lattice. The entire structure is really a series of solar panels, evaporators (pink) and condensers (blue)

First hot salty air (hotpink arrows) flows through the grid (shown in pink) on the right, towards the blue tubes on the left. The blue tubes are the condensors. They are filled with very cold seawater pumped up from the deep ocean (thats why it has to be next to a deep water source: for the heat differential) with holes at the tops, under each solar panel "roof".

Solar powered fans blow the cold ocean spray out, towards the pink grid, against the prevailing warm sea wind coming through the grid. The combination of cold spray and warm air causes the salt to dry on the grid.

Once the warm humid sea air, cleansed of salt, reaches the columns it is rapidly cooled by the deep ocean seawater inside each column.

So it condenses and drips down each column sliding into containers at the bottom, and is ultimately stored underground, producing, Paton says: "enough freshwater to supply a city", depending on the size of this desalination structure and the city size and population, obviously.

The diagram below shows how the flow rates could be controlled by louvres on the leeward side. The reason that the entire structure tilts is that the flat "floors" you see in the diagram below are really solar panels, and thats why the structure is not built straight up and down. It is angled to maximize the amount of sunlight hitting the panels.

This project has a few siting requirements.

1. very steep beaches so cold deep water is close.
2. a steady wind direction off the water source.
3. good solar source

What makes Charles Paton's invention so exciting is that it uses the deep cold ocean water/warm land air differential like the cold water powered aircondioning systems that more cities and towns are turning to. But Paton takes that idea one step further in that this actually makes fresh water on a municipal scale using renewable power.

Charles Paton's previous project, the seawater greenhouse, also desalinates water naturally, using just sunshine, wind and seawater, and then uses that to grow crops, and he was lead engineer on Britian's Eden Project.

The simplicity of the technology and the gorgeous sweep of the form is light years away from the fossil-fueled desalination plants that this should replace.

Via Inhabitat

Related stories:
Air-Conditioning Cities With Deep Water
3000 Years Later A Ziggurat For 1 Million Citizens
Desalinated Seawater Greenhouse Cools Desert Agriculture

For Matternetwork Read more...

Air-Conditioning Cities With Deep Water

Virtually any city or town next to a lake, ocean or river could pump chilled water from the depths for natural air cooling

China is considering using deep ocean water to aircondition Hong Kong.

The high rise office buildings of Hong Kong; man-made "cliffs"-- are right next to the ocean. This makes it easy to cool them, by leveraging the differential between the cold ocean depths and warm surface temperatures.

Hong Kong will circulate deep ocean water through a district-wide cooling system.The water is pumped to a heat exchanger at the shore and the warm water from the buildings flows down to push cool water up to the buildings. The system is both elegant and cost effective.

Similar projects to cool large building complexes and downtown areas are underway in Singapore, Gibralta, Stockholm and Honolulu.

The same technique can be applied using the cold depths of lakes and rivers too. And not just for cities. This natural cooling be used by smaller communities like universities, hospitals or hotel resorts.

Cornell University has a pilot project utilizing lake water for its cold water source. Pumps draw cold water from a nearby deep lake, Lake Cayuga.

Enwave also uses lake water, to cool downtown Toronto. Their interactive diagram shows you very clearly how their deepwater cooling works using the icy-cold water of Lake Ontario as its renewable energy source of naturally chilled deep lake water.

How fortunate that all through history, we built so many towns and cities near water. Back then, that was because it was easier to move stuff along waterways. Early roads got muddy, but water made for easy hauling.

And now that we are looking for low-carbon alternatives, that fortuitous proximity to water comes in handy for another use. Eco air-conditioning.

Published at Matter Network Read more...

Desalinated Seawater Greenhouse Cools Desert Agriculture

Seawater Greenhouse uses the sun, the sea and the atmosphere to produce fresh water and cool air where it is needed most: in the desert.

Greenhouses usually provide warm growing conditions in cooler climates. But why not use the idea in reverse to make growing crops possible in inhospitably hot climates. Thats the idea invented by Charlie Paton and engineered by Philip Davies in their Seawater Greenhouse Project.

The reverse greenhouse is designed to create an environment that is cool, humid and bright, a reverse of the warming effect of typical cold climate greenhouses. It is for use in desert climates adjacent to seawater. First, you have to find a desert next to the sea, which is not too difficult. Then, this is how this idea works:

1. Seawater cools inside the greenhouse

Facing the prevailing sea wind the entire front wall of the greenhouse is a honeycomb lattice that catches seawater and evaporates it. Seawater trickles down over the lattice, cooling and humidifying the air passing through into the planting area.

2. The heat of the sun is removed

Sunlight is filtered through a specially constructed roof that only allows visible light through to promote photosynthesis, but trapping the infrared heat in an isolated chamber.

3. Fresh water is created by condensation

Cool air passes through the planting area and then combines with the hot dry air contained in the roof cavity. The mixture passes through a second sea water evaporator creating extremely hot watersaturated air which then flows through a condenser cooled by deep seawater. The extreme temperature difference causes fresh water to condense.

4. Water is stored for irrigation

The freshwater is stored in a tank underneath the ground where it is kept cool and piped back up to irrigate the crops both inside and outside under a canopy.

Continued growth in demand for water and increasing supply shortages are two of the most certain and predictable scenarios of the 21st century. And the desert creeps towards ever more people. Agriculture, with its high demand for water, will be a major pressure point.

For Matternetwork

Read more...

Cars After The Age Of Oil - EVs For A Mad Max World

We will continue to redesign both our lifestyles and our expectations, because we just are an inventive species. There is always that relaxed charm of simply accepting a simpler way of life... time to smell the roses...


We as individuals will continue to create great solutions, from the sublime to the simply ridiculous like this picnic table bicycle invention


or this kiddie EV.

Here is a brilliant and laboriously complex recreation of life's own preferred method of transportation: walking

Here is homegrown pedalpower even I would feel safe riding. With a 3 year old uninsured $30,000 broken ankle, I am wary of balancing tricks.


This is a great design for third world water transportation

Clearly people are willing to try anything to cut gas use...

Reminds me: somebody wanted to see an Electric ATV EV: this company showed these well made ones at the Anaheim EV Show:


The inventor of this solar powered EV pulled by George Bush makes a pretty good case for how much better robot legs work than wheels.


But for all of us unwilling to be pried from our more traditional vehicles,

this series is for you.

This is Part IV of a series:
Cars After The Age Of Oil - EVs Go Back To The Rickshaw
Cars After The Age Of Oil - EVs Coming To The US By 2010
Cars After The Age Of Oil - EVs Now If You Have The Time Or Money
Cars After The Age Of Oil - EVs In A Mad Max World


And to all the terrific Democratic policy wonks on the California legislature who demanded with the Zero Emissions Vehicles Mandate that auto companies produce at least some (nor as many as we would like) cars with zero emissions - which got all the car manufacturers jumping through this hoop into the future, our planet says thank you. Read more...

Cars After The Age Of Oil Part I - EVs Go Back To The Rickshaw

The rest of the world knows this is the end of The Age Of Oil.

Our planes are dropping from the skies. Truck drivers are striking on the highways. Our oil-based agriculture is going belly-up. We are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Gas prices will not be going down.

We are now facing a radical change in how we get around, akin to the end of the horse and buggy era.
There are various options going ahead. Cuba shows us one way to end The Oil Age. They have been painstakingly restoring and are still running the 1950's cars we abandoned to them over a half century ago.

Some will no doubt find ways to convert the stock we have to new uses, as they have. The SUV you trade in next is unlikely to still run on gas in 20 years. If you are handy you might want to consider the conversion options I listed here last year.

This turning point in history: the end of The Oil Age, need not be the end of a functioning economy. We switched painlessly from the end of the whale oil age. Think of the era of oil as a blip in our transportation history. We can switch to a new tech that is older and simpler than the Internal Combustion Engine - the electric horseless carriage was first created in 1830:

Our early designs for horseless carriages had a certain elegance that grew from the simplicity of the electric motor driving them, like this 1900 Porsch EV.


What are the feasible options after The Oil Age ends?

I have zero faith in alt fueled climate disasters such as ethanol (interesting new take on why it doesn't make sense), hydrogen (why it doesn't make sense) and coal fumes (duh): so I am not covering these. I will cover here my favorite options. Both return us to before the oil age, back to the 18th century: the Age of Reason. These are

1. Human powered (electric assisted)
2. Electric vehicles (covered in Part II)

And of course use renewable energy to power them.



1.Human power
OK. Human powered vehicles have come a long way in dignity since the rickshaw, but essentially that is what these are. Perhaps we have to make peace with our animal nature to accept again what looks pretty outrageous to the modern eye. People moving other people. Shocking. Disgusting.

Yet. Times change. Now as part of a health conscious age we see this differently.

Pedicabs. Post Oil Age Cuba has fleets of them to show us how its done.

En France we have the ubiquitous Urban Cab


Spain too.



They are really noticing the desert creeping towards them in Europe, where they still have a fourth estate to keep them apprised of these matters:

The Sahara has crossed the Mediterranean, forcing thousands to migrate as a lethal combination of soil degradation and climate change turns parts of southern Europe into desert.

A major UN conference was told yesterday that up to a third of Europe's soil could eventually be affected.

A fifth of Spanish land is so degraded that it is turning into desert, according to figures released for the first time yesterday, and in Italy tracts of land in the south are now abandoned and technically desert.

Whereas here we don't even know that Cedar Rapids just sunk due to climate change. The IPPC predicted increasing flooding and precipitation in the Eastern US droughts and wildfires in the Wast due to climate change. There has been a fourfold rise in dangerous weather incidents in the last decade.

Zero emission vehicles make sense.



NYC uses pedicabs, they are big in Indonesia, the New Amsterdam Project delivers groceries with these cargo rickshaws they designed and built.


Electric assisted pedicabs make a lot of climate change sense, even apart from the end of oil. If you image google rickshaw you'll see the many new designs being developed, clearly there is a movement in this direction. The human powered vehicle is also good for moving kids and groceries, and in Europe where towns were designed for a human scaled life people do ride more bikes.

This is Part I of a series:
Cars After The Age Of Oil - EVs Go Back To The Rickshaw
Cars After The Age Of Oil - EVs Coming To The US By 2010
Cars After The Age Of Oil - EVs Now If You Have The Time Or Money
Cars After The Age Of Oil - EVs In A Mad Max World Read more...