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Core Power, a UK company, has developed a ship capable of desalination of seawater using nuclear energy. “This could be a great innovation to combat the shortage of drinking water in the world”, according to the company's CEO, Mikal Bøe
Core Power, the UK company responsible for developing nuclear-powered propulsion solutions, launched on Monday (25) a new line of business for floating desalination plants. Although plants used to desalinate seawater on land have been built all over the world, including in Australia, Saudi Arabia and North Africa, the cost of building, fueling and maintaining these facilities is high and they also use fossil fuels for energy, according to the company itself in its report.
Nuclear-powered vessels can produce up to 450 m² of drinking water
Using floating installations, built on traditional ship hulls, powered by micro reactors of nuclear energy, concept ships can provide electricity and desalinated water.
These ships could produce water at a rate of between 60 to 450 m² per day, corresponding to the scale of existing facilities built to desalinate seawater. The ships benefited from the efficiencies of the shipyard's construction, reducing installation time and cost, being more flexible in their movement, that is, they would be able to expand or reduce quickly depending on demand, according to the company in charge.
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According to Mikal Bøe, CEO of Core Power, of all the difficulties faced by the company, the global drinking water emergency will be the most precarious crisis. Therefore, it will be necessary to develop long-term, flexible and sustainable solutions such as the use of nuclear energy, so that it will be possible to provide drinking water wherever and whenever it is needed on a large scale.
Global demand for seawater desalination could reach 266 million m²
The ships used to desalinate seawater powered by Core Power's nuclear energy can make fresh water available to all coastal states, sustainably, safely and without emissions due to the source. Severe changes in weather patterns mean that quick installation is required, without the years of planning and construction required to build new onshore plant facilities used to desalinate seawater.
While ordinary ship hulls provide installation flexibility and easier transits between sites, nuclear-powered floating structures bring greater deployment flexibility and easier transits between sites, as well as greater resistance to adverse weather effects.
Core Power's innovative idea is designed based on a ship's hull containing a floating nuclear power reactor and water desalination systems through reverse osmosis. Core Power's modeling, taking into account climate change and population expansion, estimates that demand for desalination will reach 266 million cubic meters per day by 2050.
All in search of drinking water
In addition to Core Power, which seeks drinking water through the desalination of sea water, researchers from the École Polytechnic Federal de Lausanne (EPFL) have developed a new water filter that uses only solar energy as a power source.
Chemists, biologists and physicists were united in a single project to develop a very cheap, efficient device that does not need any source of energy other than solar. During the tests, the researchers discovered that only the titanium dioxide nanowires, the material used in the project, were already able to efficiently purify water when exposed to sunlight.
By adding other materials called neutral carbon nanotubes, it was possible to obtain an extra layer of decontamination, killing pathogens such as bacteria and viruses.
