| The World's First Osmotic Power Plant to be Opened in Norway |
| 20 November 2009 |
|
On Tuesday November 24, 2009, Norway will inaugurate the world's first osmotic power plant, located in Tofte, outside Oslo. The plant was designed and developed by Statkraft, a world’s leading company in the development of renewable energies and osmotic power. It is still a prototype with a limited production capacity and is intended primarily for testing and development purposes. The goal is to build a commercial osmotic power plant within a few years’ time. In fact, it has been calculated that osmotic power, besides being a totally clean and renewable source of energy, has a global potential of 1.600 to 1.700 TWh. Energy production in the plant would exploit the natural phenomenon called osmosis, which is the transport of water through a semi-permeable membrane from a solution with a low concentration to a solution with a higher concentration, until on both sides of the membrane there is an equal concentration of fluid. In this prototype osmotic power plant, fresh water and salt water will be guided into separate chambers divided by an artificial membrane. The salt molecules in the sea water will attract freshwater through the membrane, increasing the pressure on the sea water side. The pressure thus obtained is expected to equal a 120 metre water column, or a significant waterfall, and will be utilized in a power generating turbine. Osmotic power plants can, in principle, be located wherever fresh water runs into the sea; they produce no noise or polluting emissions and they can be integrated into existing industrial zones, for example in the basements of industrial buildings." |
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