The Jamaican Green Desalination Project is glad to announce that the MPhil associated with the project was validated, in September 2020, by the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. The thesis is entitled “RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR DESALINATION PROCESS: EFFICIENCY AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS IN A TROPICAL ISLAND USING DIGITAL TOOLS”
It is an initial project of three years, fruit of collaboration of the TCG•NRG and UWI Mona. This research is innovative for Jamaica and proposes the use of the Reverse Osmosis process to be run with Renewable Energy. The work done took a snapshot of the freshwater and Renewable Energy resource based on up to 50 years of data. Maps of the best locations to produce freshwater based on the Renewable Energy resource (i.e., wind, solar and wave), freshwater need and the impact of the waste aka by-product (i.e., brine) on the coastal environment have been produced for Jamaica. The impacts of a desalination plant powered by Renewable Energy have been evaluated in equivalent carbon dioxide tons saved and volume of sea water needed to dilute the brine produced by the desalination process.
Jamaica has a new Master of philosophy in Applied physics named Zachary Williams. The Thesis will be available for download in the couple of months.
These three years of research set methodology to select:
- the type of Desalination process based on the environmental conditions.
- the Renewable Energy hybrid farm based on the available resources.
The study allows the conception of a numerical simulator, using among other GIS methods, to evaluate the Renewable Energy production based on historical data. Those tools allow for evaluation of the production of freshwater and waste for the next decades.
One of the main output is the generation of map of the best location a Green Powering Desalination plant (see figure)
