POWERING UP USING OSMOSIS

摘要

Last century osmotic power was no more than a pipe dream for researchers but in the past five years all that has changed. In November 2009 Norwegian utility company Statkraft launched a 1-2 kW prototype plant in Tofte, south of Oslo, while REDstack, a spin-off of Dutch R&D company Wetsus, is scaling up its 5 kW pilot at the salt refinery in Harlingen to a 50 kW demonstration plant halfway up the country's Afsluitdijk causeway. With rapidly improving advances in membrane technologies, its huge potential is beginning to come to light. According to Wetsus, Dutch coastlines and rivers hold somewhere in excess of 18 TWh of potential generating capacity, enough to power 1 million households. Meanwhile in Norway, estimates suggest the technology could generate some 12 TWh annually from the country's fjords.