On the feasibility of ocean brine pool power stations

Abstract

The demonstrated existence of vast brine pools in a number of places in the ocean basin around the world offers an interesting opportunity to the production of power from ocean, which has not been yet considered. The attractiveness of these vast deposits of brine lie in the fact that can be readily dissolved with the surrounding top waters extracting the spontaneous osmotic mixing energy released. In addition, osmotic engines can pumped out the brackish streams by buoyancy without the add of pressure exchangers (PEXs) as is required in current pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) technology and then simplifying significatively the overall process. Utilizing a simplified physical model, a first estimation for the density of power per unit of membrane area was calculated. KEYWORDS ocean power, osmotic energyHow to cite this article: Arias F J, De Las Heras S. On the feasibility of ocean brine pool power stations. Int J Energy Res. 2019;43:9049-9054.

Pool pressure‐retarded osmosis

“…Several technologies have been researched to extract energy from salinity gradients, [3], but doubtless pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) is the technique which has emerged as the most promising technology, [4]. Although many configurations for a PRO system have been proposed, for example, concepts in which osmotic power production is attained by pressurizing the fluid rather than increasing volumetric flow, [5], or concepts related with the design of the module configuration of the PRO membrane, [6] as well as alternative applications, [7], [8], however, for illustration purposes, the most simple PRO system depicted in Fig. 1 seems preferable.…”