Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SunAqua18 (Sustainable Desalination System) Reporting period: 2017-12-01 to 2020-09-30 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project Finally it has become obvious that water is a scarce resource. It was perceived as an endless resource, used in agriculture without any sort of optimization, 30% of it lost in leakages, withdrawn from aquifers without control and contaminated by industry and populations without the slightest care.Now we see the depletion of all aquifers (ex. Dead Sea, Aral Sea, all sort of underground aquifers that generate the sagging of the ground, …) and the future exhaustion of water sources like the glaciers of Himalaya. Meanwhile, 2 billion people suffer from water shortage, an increasing quantity.It is a must to optimize the use of water and generate new water resources in the next decade. AQUA.abib tackled this problem with a new technology for seawater desalination, which may be used also for Zero Liquid Discharge to be used for the brine of systems like Reverse Osmosis and/or to treat contaminated waters from the industrial sector.SunAqua is a system for water distillation. In the case of seawater, this means generating new fresh water and also dry salt for its use in animal farming, industry and ice-melting (roads). In the case of industry, this means treating contaminated water to separate and recover both the water and its solutes for its re-use. Applications such as the former ones both generate new resources, multiply the efficiency of the ones being used (decreasing demand) and greatly contribute to sustainability.Previous to the SunAqua18 project, AQUA.abib counted with a small-scale prototype proving the viability of the disruptive process developed and patented by AQUA.abib. The objectives of SunAqua18 were to scale-up the technology, build a large-scale plant to assess and demonstrate its technical and economic viability and make of it a show-case to ease the first sales and accelerate growth. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far The first stage of the project included a scalability study through simulation. The results of the study were aligned with the initial expectations, as reflected in RP1. At a later stage but before the construction of the plant, the simulation and its conclusions were reviewed, and a deficiency was identified. The results of the new study led to the necessity to introduce changes in the original design. The concatenation of reviews and changes finally included a change of paradigm, in which the evaporation was located inside the distillation column instead of outside it. Meanwhile, due to the withdrawal of Menorca, third party who had to provide the construction plot, AQUA.abib was looking for a new location for the plant. AQUA.abib enjoyed the option to potentially collaborate with three companies at Sant Fruitós, Zaidín and Granada. Two of them were rejected due to the companies’ requirements, and the one with Zaidín was hibernated because AQUA.abib found the perfect place at Almería, in collaboration with IFAPA and PSA (a governmental agency and investigation centre).In parallel with the search of a landing plot, AQUA.abib took advantage of the extra time to improve the design of the desalination plant. In relation with the new paradigm, the mechanism for harnessing the solar power was also re-designed, shifting from air to water as the main element for heat-flow. The new paradigm had a drawback: instead of achieving a 100% evaporation of water in a single step, it generated hypersaline water, after extracting an 85% of the fresh water. In order to be able to recover the salts, it was necessary to evaporate the remaining 11%. AQUA.abib’s studies ended up with the addition to the pyramid of a complementary infrastructure a dehydration tunnel. It may be viewed as a hybrid of a traditional saline and a greenhouse.Menorca’s withdrawal had an additional effect: the original construction project had to be dismissed and any definitive project was withheld until having a 100% security about the location of the plant. Even so, those elements of the construction project not related to the location were optimized as much as possible, which made possible to lower the construction costs over a 30% by lowering the needs for concrete and steel. Also in parallel and thanks to its constant contact with the market, AQUA.abib pivoted from seawater desalination to the area of Zero Liquid Discharge. ZLD is the objective of no-dumping after water use. It refers to water treatment techniques that, after, for instance, using water in an industrial process, separating again water from its solutes and then setting apart water and waste and reusing the water from those same industrial processes and/or agriculture or other activities. In the are seawater desalination this mean offering SunAqua as a ZLD systema and also as the perfect complement to reverse osmosis, for the treatment of their brine. AQUA.abib maintained a constant activity of contrasting its proposal with investors and corporations of the water sector, potential clients and its presence as exhibitor in the International Water Summit, Aquatech, Asia Water, Africa Utility Week and a commercial mission to Middle East. All those activities in the sector required constant activities of marketing, including a webpage, contents, social networks, flyers, trips, stakeholders search, follow on, market research and a constant assessment of the available information and feelings. The final result was a high value proposal, attractive for an initial extremely interesting niche: engineering firms with strong presence and interests with the public administration of Gulf Cooperation Council (mainly EAU, Saudi Arabia and Oman).Another constant parallel activity was the search of the additional funding required for the project. AQUA.abib when present in any sort of event, always kept an eye on potential investors.Finally, AQUA.abib organised a road trip to Middle East, the area in which SunAqua had raised the highest interest. AQUA.abib generated close to 30 strong leads and was able to arrange 15 physical meetings in a one-week trip. AQUA.abib returned to Barcelona with the commitment of 4 companies/brokers to share with us their proposals. Those companies did not live up to their commitments, generating a very strong crisis for the project. AQUA.abib decided to turn the project upside down and reduced the project to its minimum expression (even bellow the minimums set in the GA), readdressing its previous potential investors and raising the interest of new ones.At the end, the necessary funding was not achieved and SunAqua had to be terminated due to the lack of funds. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) AQUA.abib’s final design implied achieving a concentration of solutes (in brines and other sorts of contaminated waters) 2-3 times superior to that of other present technologies, like Multiple Effect Distilation or Reverse Osmosis, opening the door to low-cost ZLD based on solar power.This achievement has a huge impact, because it brings ZLD very close to standard systems which, although beneficial, cannot prevent dumping and, even though they recover a significant percentage of water recovery, cannot avoid contaminating.Even so, AQUA.abib’s proposal will not be able to have that impact, at least in the short term, because SunAqual has had to terminate halfway due to the lack of funds. winners climate launch pag sunaqua external structure
