Solar-Energy Innovative and Sustainable Solution for Freshwater and Food Production for Lake Titicaca Islands

Abstract

Drought and scarcity of water resources require innovative and sustainable solutions to secure water availability for poor people. Choice of solar energy for desalination is a promising and sustainable cost-effective alternative for improving high quality water supply. Today, almost all Latin American countries use different desalination technologies except for Bolivia. Bolivia has an arid to semiarid climate and suffers from salinity problems especially the Altiplano area. Thus, there is a need to introduce innovative solution using latest technologies such solar desalination at locations with scarcity of freshwater. This study suggests implementing a small desalination plant of about 10 m3/day as a demonstration plant and then successively extending the capacity. As well, it is suggested to build a solar energy system with bigger capacity to cater not only for the desalination plant, but also the excess energy to be benefit for homes, roads lighting, and other important purposes for the local community to improve life standard of the people.

Productivity Prediction of Sea Water Reverse Osmosis Desalination Plant Using Robust Regression

“…Drought is one of the "most dangerous" far-reaching of all-natural disasters on earth, according to the United Nations (UN, 2018) (Haile et al 2020). Water scarcities have emerged as a result of population growth, rising living standards, and rapid development while more than 97% of the earth's water cannot be used for direct human consumption (e.g., drinking water) due to its high salinity (Bashitialshaaer 2020). According to the World Bank's data on renewable, internal freshwater resources per capita have decreased by half in the last 50 years, from 12,000 m 3 in 1967 to 5732 m 3 in 2017.…”

“…Furthermore, there are more than 2.8 billion people which representing more than 40% of the world's population, living within 100 kilometers of the coast, and therefore, desalination is often used to solve freshwater scarcity in several parts of the world (Zapata-Sierra et al 2022). Seawater desalination is an innovative technology that can provide sustainable solutions to water crises leading to rapidly increasing global desalination capacity, from 8000 m 3 /day in 1970 to about 92.2 million m 3 /day in 2020 (Bashitialshaaer 2020). More than 300 million people rely on water produced by 18,426 desalination plants in 150 countries, which provide more than 86.8 million m 3 /day, according to the International Desalination Association (IDA) 2015 (Baawain et al 2015).…”

Planning the restoration of membranes in RO desalination using a digital twin

“…The shortage of freshwater sources around the globe has led to an increased focus on reverse osmosis (RO) desalination to meet clean-water demand for both industrial and domestic use [1][2][3]. Desalination is now a multi-billion industry.…”

“…Furthermore, when biofouling is severe, the cleaning of membranes in-situ, so-called cleaning-in-place (CIP), is not sufficient to restore an RO train to an acceptable state. Replacement of the most fouled membrane elements then becomes unavoidable [2]. Membrane maintenance can become costly when the number of elements replaced surpasses that initially projected in the plant-design phase.…”

“…This tool notionally monitors the first element in a vessel, so that a complete picture of the states of all elements in the vessel is missing. Koutsakos and Moxey [2] describe a protocol for membrane maintenance. The first step is CIP, and the second step is replacement or swapping of elements if CIP is not sufficiently effective.…”