Viabilidad técnica y económica en el diseño de una planta desaladora que utilizará energía solar y/o energía eólica para la obtención de agua potable en la Guajira colombiana

Abstract

Desalination of seawater has become the most recurrent way to obtain fresh water. The climate changes that have recently occurred, plus the global overpopulation, have increased the need to find out new ways to obtain drinking water. Many technologies have been used to find a solution to remove dissolved salts in seawater, however, the most relevant technology nowadays is the desalination of seawater by Reverse Osmosis (SWRO). RO is a technique to obtain fresh water by passing seawater through a membrane at high pressure, this technique has been strongly promoted, considering the inclusion of renewable energies which change the source of traditional electricity generation by fuel to this type of renewable and sustainable energy. The Carrizal desalination project (La Guajira Colombia), is a plan with a social focus that seeks to bring drinking water to the indigenous Wayúu population, using electrical energy from a network-assisted system, implementing a main wind power source and a photovoltaic power source as backup. The technical and economic feasibility of the project will be the purpose of this document, identifying the necessary feed water, the energy required for production, the design of the generation systems and the integration with the electricity grid, as well as recognizing the implementation costs of each technology and the possible environmental impact