Let’s Actually DISCUSS Desal Plants…And OTHER Big Projects?
August 24th, 2009A very lucid reader has contacted PWF about several infrastructure projects to which there have been viable alternatives but which have not been discussed in a public forum.
Let’s have that discussion… starting with drought-struck Victoria’s desalination plant at Wonthaggi.
The Proposed Desal Plant For Victoria
Politically there is bi-partisan support for the Wonthaggi desalination plant – so dire are Victoria’s water storage levels – but the project, foisted on an unsuspecting coastal community, is opposed by many local groups and the Bunurong Indigenous people of south-east Victoria.
The Age newspaper reported 31 July 09 that
“If all goes to plan, work will begin in October, creating 1700 jobs. Water will begin flowing to Melbourne by the end of 2011 and water restrictions in Melbourne will be eased from 2012…
The estimated cost of the plant has already blown out by about $400 million in two years, from $3.1 billion …to $3.5 billion…
(Premier John Brumby says) the project is ‘fully funded’, through the biggest private-public partnership forged anywhere in the world since the global financial crisis struck.
But there is a catch. The private consortium commissioned to build the plant wants to ‘diversify its investment base’…
In other words, it intends to sell down its debt to superannuation and pension funds and other private investors — in an extremely tight market.
The Victorian Government has agreed to be the ‘lender of last resort’, in the event that the private consortium can’t find the funds elsewhere.
The Opposition calls this a ‘funny money’ deal, but Brumby asserts there will be no problem.”
An Innovative Solution Not Yet Discussed
The proposed Wonthaggi project will use a reverse osmosis system (RO) but there is an alternative. In the Middle East waste heat from power stations is used to desalinate seawater via a thermal desalination process rather than by RO.
Explaining Reverse Osmosis/Thermal Desalination
REVERSE OSMOSIS squeezes water through a very fine membrane to remove salt and impurities from seawater.
This membrane system requires many people, continually, to operate.
THERMAL DESALINATION is a multiple effect system that uses the latent heat (energy to change from water liquid to water vapour) many times over so that the equivalent heat for 1 kg steam may produce about 10 kg pure water.
In effect this system mimics the sun, using heat/thermal energy to evaporate water which is then recaptured through condensation – like catching drops of water from a sloping shower roof.
This system requires only a man hour or so a day to operate.
Both processes are energy intensive
BUT
with thermal desalination you can use waste heat from an industrial process such as power generation in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley or Newport Power Station (at the mouth of the Yarra) where fresh water is currently used for cooling.
NB I am advised that a government paper comparing RO and thermal desalination found that RO was much cheaper. True, BUT this is NOT the case when WASTE ENERGY is used – as COULD be done all along our coastline where there is industry exhausting heat energy into the atmosphere.
Could We Do This In Victoria? YES
In the Latrobe Valley – home to five brown coal fired power stations – or at natural-gas powered Newport, where fresh water is currently used for cooling or ‘rejecting heat’ and this heat/thermal energy is not used/wasted.
This thermal energy could run thermal desalination plants as is being done in the Middle East.
HOW?
Pipe coastal seawater to a tank near one of the power stations then pipe the processed fresh water to Melbourne’s existing water supply infrastructure such as Gippsland’s Thomson Dam.
The Pros
- The thermal process makes use of an existing thermal resource currently wasted
- This is not new technology – it is already being done in the Middle East
- A thermal process has a lower life cycle cost than reverse osmosis – ‘break even’ is about 5 years.
- A thermal plant in the Valley would provide jobs in an area which will be impacted by the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS)
- Industrial symbiosis would have significantly lower greenhouse emissions than a RO plant
- If we are going to build a desal plant why not do it with greatest possible resource efficiency? We could attach desal plants to the coastal power stations that produce Victoria’s electricity
- The Valley is a arguably a ‘better’ location than Wonthaggi, as it is not a holiday area
- The power stations wouldn’t have to use fresh water in cooling so saving water for other purposes
The Cons
It MIGHT be more expensive but is better environmentally and a lot of the infrastructure is already there.
Was this alternative ever considered?
The contract has just been let, but the funds are not there yet.
Discussion of these ideas is invited..
Related Posts
August 24th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
I don’t think there should be accusations that alternatives to desalination are not discussed. Perhaps your contributor should look up the websites for Watershed Victoria; Clean Ocean Foundation; Bass Coast Surfriders. These organisations have been working hard against desalination for a long time and doing it quite publicly. Their members have a good handle on the science. As well, if your contributor would forward his/her email address I will send an invitaton to the Google Groups site of the Australian Water Network (Patron is Maude Barlow of Blue Covenant fame). The Water Warriors of the AWN discuss a wide range of water topics. Members are from campaigns in four states so we talk about dams, desal, pipelines, coal mining and long wall mining, threats to agriculture, mismanagement of the Murray Darling Basing and much, much more. So there is a lot going on – and even more can be done if everyone hops in. Steve Posselt of the AWN has just done a huge journey up the Murray and the Goulburn and down the Yarra to Melbourne. Read about it at http://www.kayak4earth.com. He is now talking to our South Oz membership about a similar project over there. Steve has published a book Cry Me A River about his first journey down the Darling and on down the Murray to its mouth. Now how much more public than that can you get. So Contributor, if you really care and are just not having a whinge, get with the folks who are working their insides out on water issues in the face of govts who think they only need to speak to bureaucracies and “water experts”.
August 28th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Hi Miss Eagle, thanks for your comments and all your info. I’ve chased up the links and listed them below for other readers’ benefit. As you infer here, we, the many and varied groups at the grassroots,are all facing the same problem – trying to get a discussion going with our policymakers – preferably before decisions are made rather than afterwards. With a worthy but fragmented challenge to government policy just how do you make your voice heard? To my way of thinking – without an enormous marketing budget to disperse information – uniting the various groups’ thoughts and science in one place on the internet, for open, honest discussion, is about the only way. There’s a heap of informed opinion on Watershed Victoria and Clean Ocean websites but you have to spend a lot of time listening/reading it all, which internet readers generally won’t do. We need an editor to draw it all together, guide the discussion and make the impact clear don’t you think?
For excellent information check out:
http://www.watershedvictoria.org.au
http://www.cleanocean.org
http://basscoastboardriders.com/
September 7th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
For more information about another group in rural Victoria go to ‘Plug the Pipe’s’ website at
http://www.plugthepipe.com/
They are working hard to stop water flowing down the North-South Pipeline away from the Goulburn-Murray-Darling Basin Food Bowl which produces most of Australia’s food.
From the website of the Murray-Darlng Basin Commission
http://www.mdbc.gov.au/
Murray-Darlng Basin Commission
GPO Box 409
Canberra ACT 2601
…’The Murray-Darling Basin covers 1,061,469 square kilometres or approximately one-seventh (14%) of the total area of Australia (7,692,024 square kilometres).
It contains over 40% of all Australian farms, which produce wool, cotton, wheat, sheep, cattle, dairy produce, rice, oil-seed, wine, fruit and vegetables for both domestic and overseas markets. As Australia’s most important agricultural region, the Basin produces one third of Australia’s food supply and supports over a third of Australia’s total gross value of agricultural production.
Three quarters of Australia’s irrigated crops and pastures are grown in the Basin. While agricultural production is vital to our economy, the Murray-Darling Basin is much more than simply a “food basket”. It has an important place in the cultural heritage of all Australians and includes many significant natural heritage features.
The national capital Canberra, is located in the Basin along with many of Australia’s major inland urban centres including Toowoomba, Bendigo, Albury Wodonga, Tamworth, Dubbo, Orange, Wagga Wagga, Queanbeyan and Shepparton. Over 2 million people live in the Basin.
Murray Darling BasinThe Basin’s most valuable resource is water.’…..
It will be even better when all groups link up and share information.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:12 am
I couldn’t agree with you more about all groups linking up and sharing info Anna – that’s PWF’s raison d’etre. Let’s make the most of our resources by sharing info and making decisions AFTER taking on board all aspects of difficult issues.
October 13th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
A colleague and I put in a submission to the Human Rights Consultation on Environmental Human Rights. People can access what we did at the following link:
http://wellbeingrights.blogspot.com/
What might be of particular interest is this suggested clause:
~~~~~~~~~~
THE RIGHT OF INTERACTIVE CONSULTATION AND DIALOGUE
WITH GOVERNMENTS AND CORPORATIONS
Citizens and residents have the right to interactive consultation and dialogue – as individuals, groups or organisations – with governments, their agencies, agents and instrumentalities and corporations, whether public or private, which affect their interests.
A code of conduct will be drawn up by governments and corporations with widespread and representative community input to ensure a high standard of interactive consultation and dialogue. Such interactive consultation and dialogue will be based upon freedom of information with the same rights of discovery as exist judicially. This will be known as the Consultation and Dialogue (CaD) process.
All major environmental applications will be subject to the Consultation and Dialogue (CaD) process.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Victoria has a Charter of Rights and Responsibilities. I would like to see a companion document – Compact with the Community – outlining the relationship with Government/Parliament/Bureaucracy and the Community. My aim is too have the decision-makers participate in authentic two-way discussions/consultations with communities – and to give community organisations due recognition and access to all information so that they do not have one hand tied behind their back in any consultative process.
This can only happen if people organise themselves and give some time and energy to the process. Otherwise, governments and bureaucracies (irrespective of which party is in govt) will ignore us and walk all over us.