Fukuoka Area Waterworks
Japan’s first osmotic energy center uses the osmosis process to feed a turbine that in turn creates energy.
Imagine generating electricity not from sunlight or wind, but from the simple mix of fresh and salty water. This is the promise of osmotic energy, which is already being implemented in Japan.
Electricity by Osmosis: The idea has existed for decades, but only now has begun to be used in the real world. Japan inaugurated the first factory of this type in late August, and is giving much to talk about.
The principle underlying the osmotic potential is deceitly simple: when freshwater and salt water are separated by a semipermeable membrane, water molecules are naturally shifted through the barrier to balance the difference. This flow creates a strong enough pressure to turn a turbine. No combustion, no emissions. And, unlike wind or solar energy, there is no dependence on climacteric conditions or daylight, which makes it continuously functioning.
The first real impulse came in 2009, when the Norwegian company Statkraft built one of the first prototypes of the world’s osmotic power plants. The four kilowatt demonstration model proved that the concept could generate electricity, but due to costs, technology remained mainly in laboratories and small pilot projects.
Now, only for the second time since the development of these prototypes, has been inaugurated a real scale installation in Fukuokain Japan.
It’s just Second Osmotic Energy Center in the world Conceived for continuous production, after the release of another central in Denmark in 2023.
Although considered modest in terms of scale, according to it, it will produce about 880,000 kilowatts-hour per year-enough to supply 220 dwellings or compensate for the energetic needs of a desalination center.
Revolutionary central
As New Atlas points out, which distinguishes the installation of Fukuoka from all previous iterations of technology is not the amount of energy it generates, but the way as physics applies to infrastructures.
When connecting to a desalination center, Take advantage of the brine residues concentrated that would otherwise be eliminated, creating a more pronounced salinity contrast than what rivers provide naturally.
Those stronger gradients increase efficiency and underlie the osmotic generation on existing systems and not in the laboratory.
The use of concentrated folding of desalination increases the available energy. This integration represents a milestone in engineering – and underlines the main attraction of osmotic energy: its reliability.
Unlike solar or wind energy, osmotic energy can function continuously where whether freshwater and salt water are: in estuaries, desalination facilities and even in interior salty lakes.
Although osmotic energy may never reach the scale of solar or wind energy, as energy grids diversify, stable background renewable energies will be more important than ever, especially when they can be linked to existing infrastructures.
