The purpose of this thesis is to study the feasibility of wave powered desalination: what areas would be potential for wave powered desalination and how much the produced water would cost.
The wave powered desalination system examined in this thesis is called AaltoRO and essentially it encompasses of a Wave Energy Convertor (WEC) and of a Reverse Osmosis (RO) facility. The WEC pressurizes the seawater directly to a suitable pressure, which is fed via a medium pressure pipeline to the onshore RO facility where fresh water is produced.
The structure of this thesis is twofold. The first part consists of a literature review and it will present wave energy and desalination technologies as well as examine the world on the basis of wave resource, need for fresh water and price of electricity. The second part is the feasibility study, and it will incorporate the detailed optimum configuration of the concept, performance details in various locations and also the calculations resulting in a water price of €/m3 .
