Water+and+Energy+Paper

Sam Wheelock Energy and Water Paper  One of the biggest problems we are facing on a global scale today is the unavailability of fresh water. According to the World Bank and World Health Organization more than two billion people lack access to clean water and another one billion people do not have enough available water to meet their minimum daily needs. The worlds water consumption is doubling every twenty years, two times the rate of population growth. By 2025 it is estimated that the demand for water will exceed the supply by as much as fifty six percent. The other problem is that the fresh water that is available is being poisoned by the toxins and chemicals we dump into it. As the population grows more industries are being developed and they can pollute the water sources if precautions are not taking. The Earth’s population is growing everyday and expected to exceed nine billion people in less than forty years, if there is not enough water to supply everyone now as it is then this a major problem the population is facing. A good example of this is in India where the population is growing at an enormous rate and they already face drinking water problems. India is not a desert and has a large supply of freshwater but their government has done a poor job of regulating industry and they have rendered their freshwater useless in many areas. They also have a huge agricultural economy that put an even greater strain on the need for clean water with farmers using around 85% of the total water consumption. As the need becomes greater they have began pumping groundwater from lower and lower levels faster than rainwater can replenish the source. Another problem we are facing is energy problems. As the population grows we are constantly in need of more electricity to power the things we use in our day to day lives. In the United States alone we produce almost twenty five percent of the carbon dioxide emissions, yet we only make up four percent of the worlds population. The fossil fuels and coal we have been using to generate all of this power is not going to last forever and is drying up. We need to look toward new sources of renewable energy that do not create carbon dioxide and are in abundance and free. One of these areas is using wind power to generate energy and slow down the climate change that we have helped to speed up.  The driving force of the problem is the growing population of the Earth. The Earth is seventy one percent water, but most of the water available is useless for farming or human consumption, with the oceans making up ninety seven percent of the world’s water supply. The largest source of freshwater is locked up in the glaciers, which will also turn into salt water as temperatures continue to rise and they melt away into the ocean. Human beings have created the water shortage problem both directly and indirectly. We overuse the freshwater, and have contributed to the climate change which has had drastic effects on the weather creating droughts in areas all over the world. This past year Texas suffered some of the worst droughts ever seen and lost crops and livestock due to it.  In more developed countries people have tried to clean up rivers and reduce the amount of toxins being put into the water. The opposite can be said for countries such as India and China were the growing industries are not regulated in what they dump into the fresh water sources. Monitoring water usage is complicated and it seems like it is an issue people would rather ignore until it is to late. It is hard to regulate something that is essential for life.  One of the things being done to try and solve the problem is water desalinization. Both brackish and salt water can be converted into fresh water. The desalinization process removes salt and other minerals from the water and can produce table salt as a by product. The problem with desalinization is that it is not an easy solution, on a large scale it requires a large amount of energy and a lot of infrastructure which makes it a costly solution. Ships already use this process to supply their own freshwater from the ocean, but on a much smaller scale. Today there are 14,451 desalinization plants in operation around the world, they can produce around 15.8 billion gallons of fresh water every day. The largest desalinization plant is located in the United Arab Emirates and uses multi-stage flash distillation. This involves flashing a portion of the water into steam in multiple stages and then cooling that steam into you finally finish with pure fresh water. This process can be combined with a power plant, with the heat generated by the power plant used to heat the salt water. Multi-stage flash distillation plants make up about sixty four percent of the plants worldwide, with the others being reverse osmosis plants. This process is more involved than flash distillation. The usual steps are: sending water through a sediment filter to trap larger particles, a smaller filter to catch smaller particles, an activated carbon filter that traps organic chemicals and chlorine, a reverse osmosis filter, a second activated carbon filter, and finally an ultra violet light is used to detect any objects that may have passed though the filtering process. The flash distillation process makes up eighty five percent of the fresh water produced by distillation plants worldwide every year.  One of the problems facing desalinization plants is that they need either a stand alone power source, or be added onto an already existing power plant. These power plants also have to be powered by fuel, which means either using fossil fuels or nuclear power. Desalinization can solve one problem but it also produces another. Fossil fuels will not last forever and nuclear power produces waste which we must store as there is no solution to get rid of it safely. Many countries already use their nuclear power plants to desalinate water. Japan alone had eight nuclear reactors operating desalinization plants with India and Russia also using this process. On a United States Navy aircraft carrier the Navy produces up to four hundred thousand gallons of fresh water a day using the ships nuclear plant to do so. A fossil fuel power plant can also be coupled onto a desalinization plant and be much more efficient, but then how much use is it when we run out of fossil fuels to fuel the power plant. Another argument against desalinization is the distance away from the water source. Areas along the cost have an unlimited supply of water to use in a plant, but what about areas not near the coast that are in need of fresh water. Saudi Arabia pumps water through a two hundred mile long pipeline from Jubail to Riyadh. This is not a cheap process. To transport water to areas inland of the coast you need to build facilities to do so. If the area is covered in mountainous terrain this could make it near impossible. A way to solve the energy problem is to couple a distillation plant into renewable energy. This has already been successfully done in Perth, Australia. The plant does not run completely off of energy produced by the Emu Downs Wind Farm, but with enough windmills it would be possible to do so. Another downfall of desalinization is that the brine produced in the process is pumped back into the ocean, and has the potential to harm the ecosystem in that area. The UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran have a combined one hundred and twenty distillation plants between them. These plants put almost twenty four tons of chlorine, sixty five tons of antiscalants used on the pipes, and 300 kilograms of copper into the Persian Gulf everyday. They also put the brine which is extremely concentrated saltwater into the Gulf along with this. All of this can kill off the sea life. The plants are also sucking in the salt water and can take in marine life and their eggs along with the water in the process.  People around the world are looking into other ways to desalinate water. Some of these options include: using solar energy to power the plants, nanotube membranes to desalinate which would require a lot less energy than the reverse osmosis process, Siemens Water Technology has developed a way to apply an electric field on saltwater that that can desalinate one cubic meter of water using only one and a half kWh of energy, and freeze thaw desalinization where seawater is frozen and fresh water is produced just like in the Arctic regions.  Desalinization can produce unlimited amounts of freshwater with the right facilities. If the issue of powering the process and transporting the water produced is solved then it is a very viable option to supply the human population with the water they need to survive. Desalinization is one of the best options that is available to us right now and it has already proven to be an effective source of freshwater. The problems such as a fuel source and effectively getting rid of the by products has to be addressed and solved, once they are it could be the best option available. Ships can supply their own sources of water in the middle of the ocean so there is no reason that this could not be done on land where everything needed is available at our fingertips.  One of the options to power desalinization plants using renewable energy is wind farms. A wind turbine converts kinetic energy into mechanical energy and does not have to burn any fossil fuels to do so. As we run out of our fossil fuels we have to look toward other options that do not require them. Wind is a resource that we will never run out of and it is free. Australia has already used them to help power a desalination plant and they could be put to use to create a standalone plant that didn’t produce CO2 as a byproduct.  Wind turbines used on a wind farm usually utilize a three bladed design that are pointed into to the wind using a computer controlled motor. These blades rotate at ten to twenty two revolutions per minute. Often a gear box is used to control the speed of the blades rotations, but sometimes they utilize a direct drive system on the tower. Some models of turbines operate at a constant speed, but it is more common for them to be variable speed turbines. Variable speed turbines can generate a lot more energy than a constant speed turbine. When wind speeds become too high for the turbine to operate the blades are put at an angle so the turbine no longer operates to avoid damage. Horizontal turbines are also in use such as the one on top of fifth company at Mass Maritime, but are not as common. Using windmills is an extremely effective way to harness energy at little cost to our environment and our wallets. The initial cost of installing a wind farm can be high but it pays its own way by creating free energy.  Some of the arguments against wind farms are cost, reliability, environmental impacts, and personal opinion. To construct and lease an area for a wind farm can be an enormous cost. They also have to connect the farm into existing power grids. To be an effective source of energy a huge amount of turbines are needed and they are not cheap to produce and install, especially if they are being installed offshore. Windmills are great when there is wind, but the wind is sporadic and not an element that humans can control and direct. Wind speeds can vary day to day from dead calm to hurricane force winds. Wind speed is the primary factor that decides how effective a turbine will be. The turbines have to be placed in the right area. A prime example of this is Cape Wind. Living on Cape Cod I have heard the pros and cons of having an offshore wind farm for years now. Even though it may be a prime spot the majority of people that live on the Cape are against it due to aesthetic reasons. People in Falmouth have recently had a turbine built there and complain that it causes noise and shadows that disrupt their daily lives. They have also been called an eyesore and that they destroy the value of the land surrounding them. It has been claimed that the wind farms could kill birds if they flew through the blades of the towers and that if something went wrong the oil that is used to lubricate the gears could be spilled into the ocean creating a problem. With offshore wind farms it is also said it could pose a problem to boaters navigating around of through the towers and that it could affect marine life in the area around them.  Wind power also has many advantages it is renewable, unlimited, does not produce any green house gases during operation and if offshore would use very little land. As our fossil fuel run out we have to look towards power sources such as the wind which is not going to run out on us. Wind will always be available and we do not have to drill or mine for it and destroy the environment in the process of doing so. Unlike conventional gas and coal fired plants or nuclear powered plants a wind turbine does not produce any harmful emissions that are leaked into the environment. If the turbines are located offshore they also don not take up land which is a concern as the population continues to grow at an increasing rate and we need more land for things such as agriculture.  One of the largest wind farms in operation today is the London Array, and once completed will be the largest to date. It will cover ninety square miles between Margate in Kent and Clacton in Essex. The first phase in expected to be completed at the end of 2012 and will produce up to six hundred and thirty megawatts. This will consist of one hundred and seventy five SWT 3.6 turbines. It is expected that these turbines in the first phase will produce enough energy to power a quarter of the homes in London or the entire counties of Kent and Sussex when complete. A recent presentation that I attended about job opportunities was installing these turbines. They said that due to the situation in Japan they are going to be shutting down their nuclear power plants and have started the process to convert their country into one that primarily uses wind as the energy source.  To make wind power a more viable energy source the greatest hurdle I see to overcome is popular opinion. People have to get on board to make it become a solution to our energy problem. In regions that have a reliable source of wind and available land to build upon it is one of the best options to produce emissions free energy at a relatively cheap cost due to the fact that once they are installed the energy is free.  Wind power does not produce any emissions so it will produce no CO2. It has the ability to produce less CO2 due to the fact that we could eliminate coal and fuel burning power plants. Desalinization plants do produce CO2 if they are using a fuel or coal powered energy source, and nuclear waste if they are running off of a nuclear reactor. They have the ability to generate an unlimited source of fresh water, it just depends upon the size of the distillation plant that is producing the fresh water and what type of plant it is that is producing the water. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> As our population continues to increase energy and water problems are issues that are going to have to be addressed sooner than later. We are going to hit a point where it is to late to fix the problem. Desalinization and wind power are two of the best and most effective options that we have at our disposal and we need to continue to develop and improve upon them to try and correct the problem while we still have the chance to do so.