Fresh water is one of the most, if not THE most, precious commodity on Earth. In places like the Middle East, it's a serious problem facing all the people who live there, and it's getting worse. The ability to efficiently desalinate water, inexpensively and in very large volume, is one of the major benefits that we see as an outgrowth of widespread application of the CLEM Geothermal Electrical Generation Model.

As far back as 2004, articles were touting the breakthroughs in technology that were making power-plant waste heat desalinization a reality in areas where fresh water was in short supply.

An article in Innovations Report read in part:

University of Florida researchers have developed a technology that can tap waste heat from electrical power plants as its main source of energy, an advance that could significantly reduce the cost of desalination in some parts of the world.

"In the future, we have to go to desalination, because the freshwater supply at the moment can just barely meet the demands of our growing population," said James Klausner, a UF professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, whose research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. "We think this technology could run off excess heat from utility plants and produce millions of gallons each day," said Klausner, lead author of an article on the system that appears in the current issue of the Journal of Energy Resources Technology. He co-invented the technology with fellow UF mechanical engineering professor Renwei Mei

More than 7,500 desalination plants operate worldwide, with two-thirds of them in the Middle East, where there often is no other alternative for fresh water, Klausner said. The technology is less common in North America, with plants located mostly in Florida and the Caribbean producing only about 12 percent of the world's total volume of desalinated water, he said. U.S. residents get less than 1 percent of their water from desalination plants, he said.

The need for desalination is likely to grow, however, as the population increases and residents consume more fresh water. In Florida, for example, desalination has been touted as one solution for metropolitan areas where freshwater resources are becoming ever more scarce. With more than 97 percent of the Earth's water supply composed of salt water, desalination is even more urgent in developing nations, such as China, Klausner said.

We think that this type of technology will be an integral part of the benefits that can be derived from a widespread program to implement CLEM Geothermal Electrical Generation development. There's a lot of profit to be made and a lot of standards of living that can be improved dramatically if this were to become a reality.

Much more recently, advances in desalinization technology using ultrasound have made this prospect literally three times as appealing and profitable as it was only recently. More about that in an upcoming post. Until then, reach out to your elected representatives and make sure they're aware of the incredible potential of the vast reserve of energy stored right beneath our feet.
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