Suarez develops new solar distillation pond methods

Suarez develops new solar distillation pond methods

Tuesday, January 05, 2010
By Mike Wolterbeek

Ecosystems of terminus lakes around the world could benefit from a new system being developed at the University of Nevada, Reno to desalinate water using a specialized low-cost solar pond and patented membrane distillation system powered by renewable energy.

“These lakes – hundreds worldwide – such as the Great Salt Lake, the Salton Sea, the Aral Sea and Walker Lake here in Nevada, see a decline in water levels and an increase in salinity from both human and natural processes,” Francisco Suarez, a doctoral student in hydrological sciences at the University, said. “The high levels of salinity are dangerous and unsustainable for aquatic life.”

He presented a portion of his solar pond research last month at the annual Fall AGU (American Geophysical Union) Conference in San Francisco that was attended by 16,000 geophysicists from around the world. A paper on his project will be published in the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer in early 2010.

Suarez is developing an artificial salt-gradient stratification process that traps solar heat at the bottom of the solar pond and uses the collected energy to power the membrane distillation system recently patented by the University. The system is designed to help sustain the ecosystems of these closed-basin regions where there is no outflow for the water and a high evaporation rate, leaving a high concentration of minerals and salts.

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Suarez is working on this novel approach for sustainable production of freshwater with Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Professor and Chair Amy Childress and Professor Scott Tyler of the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering. Childress and colleagues developed the patented membrane distillation system and Tyler developed the distributed temperature sensing system that uses a laser and fiber-optic cable to record temperatures in the solar pond.

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