The notion that science can produce rivers in the desert was once preposterous–but it’s no longer a crazy idea. A collaboration between IBM researchers and scientists at Saudi Arabia’s national research organization gives promise of using one of the most plentiful resources in the kingdom, sunlight, to produce vast quantities of one of the least plentiful resources, drinkable water.
IBM and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology have been working together for two years on a handful of scientific research projects, and today they announced that they’re combining two of them in hopes of being able to produce large amounts of water at more affordable prices. The plan is to combine new solar power technology with new water filtering technology to produce a breakthrough in solar-powered sea water desalination.
Saudi Arabia is already the leading producer of desalinated water in the world. Leaders at KACST want to not only bring down the cost of producing water for their own use but to develop an industry around the technology. “We want to create a cluster of companies in the kingdom, and take this technology and market it around the world,” says Dr. Turki Al Saud, vice president for research institutes, KACST. At some point, he says, the cost of desalination may be reduced to a point where its even economically feasible to produce water for agricultural purposes.
Today’s plants produce water for up to $1.50 per cubic meter. The goal here is to bring the price down significantly enough to radically change the water supply situation worldwide. An estimated 1.2 billion people in 40 countries do not have access to safe water. “We can conceivably create a river of fresh water in countries that don’t have rivers–water for the masses at reasonable costs,” says Dr. Chandrasekhar (Spike) Narayan, who leads the Science and Technology Organization at IBM’s Almaden Research Center.
Two advances in science are at the core of today’s announcement. One of them emerged from nanotechnology, which IBM pioneered starting in the early 1980s. Modern desalination plants use the process of reverse osmosis to remove salt and other harmful chemicals from sea water. But chlorine breaks down the membranes that are used for filtration and, over time, the membranes are fouled by unwanted organic and biological molecules and particles. Researchers from IBM and KACST developed chlorine-resistant and fouling-resistant polymers that increase the permeability of the membranes without sacrificing selectivity.
The second key scientific advance comes in photovoltaics–a promising but prohibitively expensive method for converting the sun’s energy into electricity. Working together, IBM and KACST are developing a solar concentrator system by adapting IBM’s microprocessor cooling technology.That breakthrough combined others is aimed at bringing down the cost of photovoltaics for producing solar energy.
Saudi Arabia plans on build a plant using the new technology in the city of Al Khafji, which has a population of 100,000. The plant has a capacity of 30,000 cubic meters of water per day. In a second phase, the kingdom plans on building plants with 10 times as much capacity, capable of serving a city of 1 million people. The ultimate goal is to produce all of the country’s drinking water using solar energy.
Researchers from IBM and KACST have been working closely together at the Almaden lab and in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom has has the longest-running solar-energy generation plant in the world–built 30 years ago in collaboration with the US Department of Energy. Al Saud says he’s surprised at how quickly the scientists were able to produce results. For IBM’s Narayan, a key lesson was how important it is to have scientists working side by side, rather than just remotely. “Having people move back and forth is the single most important part of these big endeavors,” he says.