Thermal seawater desalination for irrigation purposes in a water-stressed region
Emerging value tensions in full-scale implementation
Gonzalo Gamboa (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Patricia Palenzuela (Universidad de Almería, CIEMAT-Plataforma Solar de Almería)
R. Ktori (TU Delft - BT/Environmental Biotechnology)
Diego C. Alarcón-Padilla (Universidad de Almería, CIEMAT-Plataforma Solar de Almería)
Guillermo Zaragoza (CIEMAT-Plataforma Solar de Almería, Universidad de Almería)
Samar Fayad (Universidad de Almería)
Dimitris Xevgenos (TU Delft - BT/Environmental Biotechnology)
M. Palmeros Parada (TU Delft - Sanitary Engineering)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Water scarcity in arid regions has driven the spread of desalination. These systems contribute to water access but come at an intensive energy cost, and lead to brine discharge and associated environmental impacts. This work aims to investigate emerging societal issues and tensions when developing and implementing a thermal desalination system to produce irrigation water in the South of Spain. This has been done in a demonstration system for solar desalination able to recover water and salts from desalination brine. For this purpose, a context-sensitive design exercise has been implemented. First, tensions between social values expressed by diverse stakeholders have been identified. Then, a set of technical scenarios for the full-scale implementation of the system were designed and evaluated, comparing them to conventional membrane desalination. The analysis indicates high economic and energy costs to avoid the environmental impacts of increasing water production.
help_outline