3MW : Sea water desalination technology

Water seems to be a superabundant natural resource on the planet earth. However, only 0.3 per cent of the world's total amount of water can be used as clean drinking water. Man requires huge amounts of drinking water every day and extracts it from nature for innumerable purposes. As natural fresh water resources are limited, sea water plays an important part as a source for drinking water as well. In order to use this water, it has to be desalinated. So, sea water desalination is a real challenge for western civilisation. The base method for sea water desalination is distillation. Approximately 620 kWh of evaporation enthalpy is necessary to obtain 1 t of drinking water.

Sea water desalination with high capacity (>1000 m³/day) faced an accelerating development.

3MW is a french company which chose to develop a simple, autonomous solution for small

communities: MEDC technology (multiple-effect drying & condensation) produces fresh water from sea or brackish water with a full solar energy feed.

EDC technology offers many key advantages:

      •  A very small power consumption

      •  A process fully integrated with solar thermal energy

      •  Very simple operating and maintenance requirement

   Founded by Antoine Gourdon, 3MW is now building on-site demonstration in France and worldwide.

Source : 3MW