Electricity generation process
AssigneeApplied Biomimetic A/S
InventorSteen Søndergaard Nissen
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An electricity generation process is disclosed. The process comprises injecting an aqueous feed stream into a salt formation to dissolve the salt contained therein, and then extracting a saline stream containing said dissolved salt from the salt formation. The process also comprises converting latent osmotic energy present in said saline stream into electricity by passage through an osmotic power unit comprising a semi-permeable membrane which permits the passage of water but not the passage of salts in which said saline stream is passed over one side of the semi-permeable membrane, a low salinity stream being passed over the other side of said membrane. The process also comprises using an output stream derived from the low salinity stream as the aqueous feed stream.
Claims20
An electricity generation process comprising the steps of:
- injecting an aqueous feed stream into a salt formation to dissolve the salt contained therein, and then extracting a saline stream containing said dissolved salt from the salt formation;
- and
- converting latent osmotic energy present in said saline stream into electricity by passage through an osmotic power unit comprising a semi-permeable membrane which permits the passage of water but not the passage of salts in which said saline stream is passed over one side of the semi-permeable membrane, a low salinity stream, the low salinity stream being a stream with lower salinity than said saline stream, being passed over the other side of said membrane;
- and
- wherein the aqueous feed stream is passed through the osmotic power unit as the low salinity stream before being injected into the salt formation.
An electricity generation process comprising the steps of:
- controlling one or more first pumps to inject an aqueous feed stream into a salt formation to dissolve the salt contained therein, and then controlling one or more second pumps to extract a saline stream containing said dissolved salt from the salt formation;
- converting latent osmotic energy present in said saline stream into electricity by passage through an osmotic power unit comprising a semi-permeable membrane which permits the passage of water but not the passage of salts in which said saline stream is passed over one side of the semi-permeable membrane, a low salinity stream, the low salinity stream being a stream with lower salinity than said saline stream, being passed over the other side of said membrane;
- and
- wherein the aqueous feed stream is used as the low salinity stream that is passed over the other side of said membrane before being injected into the salt formation.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.