Crystal Lagoons and Fraunhofer Chile Plan Pilot Plant to Desalinate Water Without Use of Energy

25 September, 2019 / News

Two leading innovation organizations, Crystal Lagoons® and the prestigious Center for Solar Energy Technologies (CSET) of Fraunhofer Chile, united in a scientific cooperation alliance a couple of years ago to build the first pilot desalination plant with technology created by the multinational. This new process radically reduces energy consumption when obtaining fresh water, making the procedure cheaper. One of Chile’s main news programs, 24 Horas, which airs on the national TV channel, TVN, has spotlighted the benefits of this revolutionary desalinization process created by the firm founded by the biochemist, Fernando Fischmann.

The Fraunhofer Institute of Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE), an affiliate of Fraunhofer Germany, developed the mathematical modeling, which is expected to be put into practice during 2020.

Crystal Lagoons desalination technology consists of a membrane distillation process that uses the temperature difference to obtain fresh water from salt water. The main innovation with respect to current technology (reverse osmosis) is that the new system does not use additional energy, but rather residual energy from industrial processes derived from Crystal Lagoons sustainable cooling system, which makes the process significantly less costly.

In essence, the cost of production of desalinated water with Crystal Lagoons technology is 70% less costly than with conventional “reverse osmosis” technologies, according to simulations and analysis previously carried out by Fraunhofer’s Institute of Solar Energy. These studies were commissioned by Crystal Lagoons as of 2017.

This innovation is a viable solution to deal with the mega-drought in areas affected by water scarcity and can be escalated to a global scale in the face of the dramatic insufficiency of fresh water that afflicts more than 1.1 billion people in the world, according to estimates from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Fernando Fischmann, president and founder of Crystal Lagoons, is a member of the Board of Directors of Fraunhofer Chile.

Crystal Lagoons is an international innovation company, founded by scientist Fernando Fischmann, which has developed a patent-protected technology that allows the construction and maintenance of unlimited-size clear water lagoons at very low costs.

TVN