The Hindu : Wave-powered desalination plant to supply water soon

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 14, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

Wave-powered desalination plant to supply water soon

By Our Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JAN. 13. The first wave-powered desalination plant will start supplying water regularly to a coastal community at Vizhinjam, near here, shortly.

The plant was built as part of a Department of Ocean Development-funded technology demonstration project for conversion of wave energy into electrical energy. Though the technology was demonstrated, the unit could not supply enough power to be fed into the State's power grid.

So the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) came up with an in-house project to use the facility to provide water to the local community using the electricity produced by the unit. A commercially available reverse osmosis plant of a capacity of 10,000 litres a day was linked to the wave energy caisson system for this.

After discussions with the NIOT Director, M. Raveendran, the senior project officer, P.T. Mathew, and others, the Minister for Ports, M.V. Raghavan, announced here on Tuesday that the State Government would take over the plant for operation on a regular basis.

The Minister said the water would be supplied to the local community at a low cost though the annual operating costs for the Government would come to about Rs. 7 lakhs.

The wave energy project, he recalled, was drawn up by the interdisciplinary wave energy group of the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai. The Harbour Engineering Department of the State Government executed the work. Subsequently, the NIOT took over the unit for research and development at the national level.

The NIOT tried different types of turbines to assess the yield of electricity and the impulse turbine was proved to give the highest efficiency. Though wave energy conversion was proven, it was found that the average powers were low, owing to random and intermittent source of energy, though peak power of more than 50 KW could be obtained. The capital costs too were high.

Mr. Raveendran said the NIOT would now continue research on a floating wave energy plant, which would be cheaper and economic. The Vizhinjam plant was being transferred to the State Government as an R&D institute could not take up supply of water on a daily basis.

The Executive Director of the Centre for Marine Analytical Reference and Standards of the Regional Research Laboratory here, C.S.P. Iyer, who analysed water samples from the plant, said that the water was of good quality with the level of total dissolved solids being less than 500 mg per litre.

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