Texas site to harness ocean for power, water
Renew Blue's Seadog pump, which uses wave and tidal power to produce electricity and can be harnessed for desalination, is about to be put to the commercial test off the coast of Texas.
Earlier this month, Renew Blue, a subsidiary of the Minneapolis-based Independent Natural Resources, was granted the first-ever state off-shore wave energy lease from the Texas General Land Office. On Thursday, Renew Blue announced that it has licensed its technology to Texas Natural Resources and that they will partner to develop an off-shore facility for 18 Seadog pumps that will both produce power and desalinate seawater for drinking.
A Renew Blue sketch demonstrating how an 18-pump Seadog plant could work.
(Credit: Independent Natural Resources)Texas Natural Resources plans to build the facility one mile off the coast of Freeport, Texas.
Water produced from the off-shore plant will initially be bottled in compostable plastic bottles produced from corn byproducts. It will be sold under the brand Renew Blue and marketed as "environmentally friendly bottled water."
"However, the greater goal of the Seadog pump field is to demonstrate what the technology can do in providing electricity and clean water at a municipal level to regions all over the world that lack fresh water and energy but have an abundance of ocean waves along their coastline," the companies said.
The project will be a test to see how scalable the technology is for widespread use.
In addition to providing electricity, the plant will initially desalinate 3,000 gallons of water per day and hold 30,000 gallons of fresh water at a time to be transported for bottling. But the plant could be designed to eventually desalinate millions of gallons per day for municipal use, according to statistics provided by both companies.
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. E-mail her at candacelombardi@gmail.com. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. 
Putting water - any water - into throw-away plastic bottles is ludicrous... what is the lifespan of the 'compostable' plastic bottle relative to the length of time it takes you to drain its contents? What chemicals are leached into the contents while it is stored?
The answers to your questions about the water bottles don't appear to be available yet from the company. This is no surprise as none of development is done. The pumping site has not been developed, and they are therefore note actually generating any energy or desalinated water from it yet. The artist's rendering of the site shows "how it could work".
More likely this would be marketed to those countries who pay a LOT of money for water and electricity: Island countries, some Middle-Eastern countries, poor countries with no infrastructure as yet for water delivery, etc.
There are no usefull details in this article at all.
Did this author even visit the place or just spoke to this company's just as ignorant PR rep through email?
Renew Blue will build some test pumps sometime in the future in the ocean near Texas which theoretically will provide some power and some drinking water.
Did i summarize this article correctly?
This is what I call 5 minute reporting. Only report the facts that take you 5 minutes or less to gather.
More info can be found here (took me 1 Google search, 30 seconds to find and 2 copy/paste operations):
http://www.greenrightnow.com/weareaustin/2009/10/08/renew-blue-says-texas-facility-will-be-first-to-produce-fresh-water-from-ocean-waves/
"The company plans to operate in the Gulf of Mexico near Freeport, Texas, to produce 3,000 gallons a day of desalinated water and will bottle and distribute it under the brand Renew Blue...Renew Blue will place an off-shore modular platform about one mile off the coast of Freeport, in roughly 25 feet of water. The company said it expects the platform, which is currently being manufactured outside of Houston, to be installed in the fourth quarter of 2009 or the first quarter of 2010."
- by sdfwef_ewer November 5, 2009 11:54 AM PST
- Regarding the comment by gefitz above:
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(10 Comments)" More likely this would be marketed to those countries who pay a LOT of money for water and electricity: Island countries, some Middle-Eastern countries, poor countries with no infrastructure as yet for water delivery, etc."
Are you implying that countries where water is a scarce commodity or those that do not have distribution systems, do not already have efficient vessels for transporting or storing water? I suggest that that they're probably a *lot* better at it than we are. Can the residents of these countries afford the water? Is there infrastructure for the collection and disposal of the thousands/millions of bottles that'll quickly accumulate?
Water in disposable container is just a bad idea. (IMHO)