The world's first plant to harness osmotic power, a type of emission-free source of energy, opened on Tuesday in Norway.
Osmosis, if anyone remembers from their grade school science classes, is a process whereby water molecules move "from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration."
The process of
osmosis happens within people, plants and other animals. We've harnessed the process to purify water -- think reverse osmosis. And now a way has been found to capture the energy generated by osmosis.
Osmosis has been studied as a potential mode of producing energy, although it was prohibited by the huge costs and engineering problems involved in creating an osmosis power plant. However, the advantages of the method have been so enticing, people have persisted in pursing the dream -- and that persistence has just paid off. Osmotic power generation is completely renewable, and possibly the most sustainable source of power in the world, and the process is described as non-polluting. The New Scientist reported the Norwegian minister for Petroleum and Energy, Terje Riis-Johansen, said "The potential is huge."
During the
opening ceremony on November 24th, Princess Mette-Marit had a cup of tea that was made using osmotic power. The company behind the world's first osmotic power plant,
Statkraft, said that the potential of osmotic power is fantastically huge -- that the amount of electricity used in China in 2002 could be produced by osmotic power. Which, according to Statkraft, is around 1,600 to 1,700 terawatt hours per year (Thw),
equivalent to approximately 10% of the world's present electricity consumption.
Osmosis plants cannot be plunked down anywhere, because they require both salt water and fresh water to work. However, the progress made in Norway has received the green light from environmentalists. The
Guardian reported that the head of WWF's Climate and Energy, Arild Skedsmo, said
"Osmotic power has great potential. In theory the power is available and it's an emission-free way of producing energy. "This is an immature technology. But like all renewables, we need a whole range of technologies to be available. Osmotic power can definitely be part of the solution."
The prototype is
generating 4 kilowatts of power which is not much electricity at all. The project has been under development since 1997, and Statkraft hopes to achieve
commercial status with the osmosis generator from 2015 to 2020. The test project has taken a total of "... 100m crowns (£10.7m) in the project since 1997, in addition to 50m crowns it received from Norwegian and EU funds."
