Home: Renewable Energy News: Wednesday 03 February, 2010

Renewable Energy News

WEDNESDAY 03 FEBRUARY, 2010 |

Saudi Arabia Turns To Solar To Power Desalination

Solar powered desalination
When Saudi Arabia, a major oil producing country, turns to the sun to solve energy problems; the world should definitely sit up and take notice.

Like Australia, Saudi Arabia faces a water crunch and also as in our own country, desalination of sea water offers some solutions.

In fact, Saudi Arabia leads the world when it comes to desalination, producing more than 18% of the world’s desalinated water. One of the big remaining challenges of desalination however is energy intensity and cost. Desalinated water from plants powered by fossil fuel - whether it's oil or coal - is carbon emissions intensive water.

Saudi Arabia enjoys a high level of sunshine, estimated at two thousand kilowatts per square meter per year and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, (KACST) has been working for some time on research and development to harness the abundance of solar energy to provide power for desalination.

The organisation aims to desalinate seawater at a cost of less than 1.5 Saudi Riyals (around AUD 45 cents) per cubic meter compared to the current cost in the range 2.5 to 5.5 Saudi Riyals per cubic meter. The group says the cost to generate electricity by solar panels will be less than 30 Halalah per kilowatt-hour; around 9 Australian cents.

Construction on a desalination plant with a capacity of thirty thousand cubic meters per day, sufficient to meet the needs of one hundred thousand people, along with a solar farm with a capacity of 10 megawatts to power it began in January. The next phase will be the construction of a solar powered desalination plant with a production capacity of three hundred thousand cubic meters per day, followed by several desalination plants using solar energy in various locations of Saudia Arabia.

Making Solar Cells From Tobacco Plants

Solar cells from tobacco plants
Scientists from the University of California, Berkeley have utilised genetically engineered bacteria to produce the basic materials for the development of solar cells from tobacco plants.

The researchers involved say the technology could be more environmentally friendly than traditional methods of making solar cells and could lead to cheap biodegradable solar cells.

The bane of the tobacco industry, the tobacco mosaic virus, was genetically tweaked by the scientists and when applied to the tobacco plant, the plant produces tiny structures it would not normally would not make - artificial chromophones that turn light into high powered electrons.

The synthetic chromophores would need to be harvested and then dissolved in a liquid solution. The structures could sprayed over a glass or plastic substrate coated with molecules that secure the chromophones to the plastic.

Solar cells created in such a way wouldn't last as long as the average silicon solar cell, but they could act as a cheap and temporary biodegradable power source.

Environmentally toxic chemicals are not required to make the solar cells and growing solar cells in tobacco plants could provide additional income opportunities for farmers.

The technology isn't limited to tobacco plants. The researchers have already added the chromophore-producing genes to E. coli bacteria, and harvested solar cells from them as well. However, it will be quite some time before the "tobacco solar cell" hits the market in consumer devices as the scientists are yet to demonstrate the next step - the production of electricity from these cells.

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