AZ Has Potential to Desalinate Brackish Waters With Wind Energy

There are many areas throughout the United States and especially in the West where growth is significant and water resources are strained. In many of these areas, brackish or saline groundwater is an unused but potentially valuable resource. These brackish water sources have been unused largely because desalination technologies have historically been energy intensive and therefore have been expensive to implement. However, as water and energy prices continue to increase, there is an opportunity for wind powered desalination to play a role in meeting the nation’s water needs.

To identify locations where wind powered desalination might be feasible, it is important to understand the geographical distribution of available saline water resources, wind energy, and locations where water consumption is increasing while resources are limited. A technique was developed to display critical wind/desalination related information for northeastern Arizona on Geographical Information System maps that could be used to identify the most promising locations for the potential use of this technology. Relevant data resources were located, digitized, and entered into a GIS system, then used to create informative maps.

Northeast Arizona was selected for a focused regional map because it possesses many of the characteristics typical where desalination may be of interest: growing water demand, lack of abundant potable water resources, available brackish and saline water resources, and wind energy resources. The regional map provides information sufficient to identify which communities/water users in the region may want to give serious consideration to desalination technologies and consider supplying the electrical needs of the desalination equipment with wind power.

Data layers in the analysis include dissolved solids concentration of the C-aquifer, wind power density (wind class 3 and higher), electricity transmission lines, major population centers, and other relevant information. The USGS was the primary source for water resource information, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for wind energy information. Because the USGS data do not exist in a georeferenced format, they were georeferenced for this study. Favorable areas for follow up study include those with wind power class 3 or higher wind resource, shallow (less than 500 feet) saline groundwater or high dissolved solids quality/shallow groundwater, and co-located population centers or electrical transmission lines.

Additional detailed information deemed important indicators of the likelihood that desalination technology could be applied are: population of select communities and their average water demand, peak water demand, well production capacity, saline water production, groundwater production, water retail price, average energy cost to produce water, peak power demand, and energy retail price. The regional map proved useful in indicating which communities in the region are best situated to benefit from wind powered desalination. An important aspect in interpreting the maps is the proximity of wind power resources with readily accessible saline water and areas with the potential need to develop the saline water resources. Since current desalination technologies require grid-quality AC electricity to operate, it is not necessary that the wind and water resources be co-located. While the economics of desalination indicate that co-locating electrical generation with the saline water resource is desirable it is not technically necessary. What is necessary is that the wind resources have access to a non-constrained transmission plant to the desalination plant.

The following, all from Northern Arizona University, are involved in the project. Abe Springer, Dept. of Geology; James Janecek, Dept. of Civil Engineering; Tom Acker and Jan Theron, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; Mark Manone, GIS Specialist, Dept. of Geology; Grant Brummels, GIS Specialist, Sustainable Energy Solutions Group; Sean Martin, Civil Engineering Student.

The work was funded by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, National Wind Technology Center.

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