This article shows a climate change mitigation strategy by means of membranes replacement and determination methodology of carbon footprint in reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plants, valid for all the islands, and even isolated territories in the continent. This study takes the case of study of Canary Islands, where there are more than 320 desalination plants with different sizes, private, and public. The objective is to propose a new method which integrates this analysis with the replacement of membranes, from 0% to 20% per year in sea water reverse osmosis desalination plants, to reduce the carbon footprint and ecological footprint. If it is considered a replacement of 20% of the elements per year, the carbon footprint could be reduced to between 5% and 6% and even more if it is introduced low energy consumption membranes instead of high rejection elements. The factor mix in Canary Islands, according to the technological structure of the generation park that uses oil products, is around 0.678 kgCO2/kWh, much higher than in the Spanish mainland where it is 0.263 kgCO2/kWh. Therefore, it is estimated in Canary Islands 5,326,963 t CO2/year can be emitted, which represents 2.4 tCO2/person/year, 12 times more the admissible admissions per inhabitant in the Canary Islands, only considering the seawater desalination sector. This document shows the different results of the analysis of energy efficiency and the environmental footprints. This study may serve as a tool for the decision-making processes related to how to improve energy efficiency in desalination plants.
In this paper, a new method for characterizing the dielectric breakdown voltage of dielectric oils is presented, based on the IEC 60156 international standard. In this standard, the effective value of the dielectric breakdown voltage is obtained, but information is not provided on the distribution of Kelvin forces an instant before the dynamic behavior of the arc begins or the state of the gases that are produced an instant after the moment of appearance of the electric arc in the oil. In this paper, the behavior of the oil before and after the appearance of the electric arc is characterized by combining a low-cost CMOS imaging sensor and a new matrix of electrical permittivity associated with the dielectric oil, using the 3D cell method. In this way, we also predict the electric field before and after the electric rupture. The error compared to the finite element method is less than 0.36%. In addition, a new method is proposed to measure the kinematic viscosity of dielectric oils. Using a low-cost imaging sensor, the distribution of bubbles is measured, together with their diameters and their rates of ascent after the electric arc occurs. This method is verified using ASTM standards and data provided by the oil manufacturer. The results of these tests can be used to prevent incipient failures and evaluate preventive maintenance processes such as transformer oil replacement or recovery.
Desalination is an opportunity to get fresh water for irrigation and for drinking. Reverse Osmosis (RO) for sea water desalination is a solution for the high demand for water in Atlantic islands. The most efficient process to get desalinated water is RO; however, it is necessary to study what to do with the RO membranes used at the end of their life. This paper confirms the possibility to recycle them. The main categories of recycling by thermal processing commonly used in the industry include incineration and pyrolysis to produce energy, gas and fuel. These processes can be applied to mixed plastic waste, such as the combination of materials used in the manufacture of RO membranes. Recycling RO elements from desalination plants is shown to be an opportunity and pioneering initiatives are already underway in Europe. Energy recovery, via incineration, is feasible nowadays and it is a possibility to recycle RO membranes. On the other hand, the recycling of RO elements, via the pyrolytic industry, for fuel production could be centralized in a new industry already planned in the Macaronesia area and all obsolete osmosis membranes could be sent there for recycling. Recycling RO membranes is a very important opportunity for the environment and economy of the zone. This is a new business in water treatments with membranes, very interesting for decreasing the residues and the carbon footprint. The importance of this work is applied to sea water membranes, brackish water ones, and also wastewater tertiaries RO elements at the end of their life.
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