THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN ADDRESSING THE WORLD’S CHALLENGESIN WATER, ENERGY AND FOOD

Water, energy and food are the essential ingredients for life, but also fundamental factors in the economy and security of any country. Coupled with increased population and climate change effect, the availability of food, energy and water (FEW) are the biggest challenges that the world faces. Over the next nine years water demand will exceed water supply by about ۴۰% according to many scientific studies and reports. Food and energy shortages have also been described by the former UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Prof. Sir John Beddington, to create the ‘’perfect storm’’ by ۲۰۳۰. It is predicted that both energy and food demand will increase by ۵۰% by then. The provision of drinkable supplies through desalination could offer a sustainable solution to the drinking water problem but also presents a technical challenge too. Seawater and brackish water are desalinated by thermal distillation and membrane methods such as reverse osmosis (RO) and electrodialysis. All these methods involve high operating and investment costs. RO is the most widely used desalination techniques, while thermal methods are mainly used in the Middle East countries. This is because RO requires restrict pre-treatment to reduce scaling, bio-fouling and the high-energy consumption, which have restricted its use in the ME countries. Renewable energy (RE) sources, including solar, wind, tidal wave and biomass, could provide secure and sustainable energy sources. However, expensive equipment and high installation costs of thesetechnologies, coupled with the uneven distribution of availability of these RE sources, have prevented them, so far, from being used widely. Availability of water and energy provides the base for food production. While water is needed for power production, energy is needed for water production hence the strong links. Innovative water and power production processes have been invented and developed at the University of Surrey and Modern Water plc. The processes are based on the manipulation of the natural osmosis phenomenon a resulted with applications in desalination and power generation which are named Forward Osmosis (FO) and Osmotic Power (OP). In an osmotic power plant, a large percentage of the chemical potential (osmotic pressure difference) of saltwater or any impure solution is converted into hydraulic pressure. The generated hydraulic pressure can be utilised for the production of electricity using a hydroturbine and a generator, or used directly through energy recovery systems for pumping or other purposes. The combination of OP with FO desalination process, coupled with other RE resources, such as solar could result in substantially lower energy consumption and less reliance on fossil fuels. The technical obstacles being overcome in the FO desalination process are the avoidance of all scaling, bio-fouling, high operating pressures, and necessity for pre-treatments and the associated chemical wastes, which result in direct and indirect reduction of cost. The FO desalination process has been developed from the lap to the market and data from the pilot plant and Modern Water’s commercial plants in Oman and Gibraltar demonstrated up to ۳۰% saving in the specific energy consumption over a conventional RO process. The FO process also offers an increase in fresh water recovery rate coupled with minimal membrane fouling propensity and brine disposal. Additionally, the process can be retrofitted with existing RO and thermal plants with reasonable modifications.