On the feasibility of ocean brine pool power stations

Abstract

The demonstrated existence of vast brine pools in a number of places in the ocean basin around the world offers an interesting opportunity to the production of power from ocean, which has not been yet considered. The attractiveness of these vast deposits of brine lie in the fact that can be readily dissolved with the surrounding top waters extracting the spontaneous osmotic mixing energy released. In addition, osmotic engines can pumped out the brackish streams by buoyancy without the add of pressure exchangers (PEXs) as is required in current pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) technology and then simplifying significatively the overall process. Utilizing a simplified physical model, a first estimation for the density of power per unit of membrane area was calculated