SYNOPSIS

The exploitation of marine energy resources such as salinity gradients, i.e. the so called “blue energy”, is receiving huge and increasing interest. However, further research and technological steps are needed to reach lower costs and large-scale developments of this limitless and reliable supply of clean energy. The Gibbs free energy that is released when two solutions of different saline concentrations (e.g. sea/rivers water) are mixed has an enormous potential; the prediction is of approximately 20% of today's worldwide energy demand. In order to harvest the free energy stored in the salinity gradient, the mixing of high and low concentration solutions has to be performed in a controlled way, for which many techniques have been developed since the 1950s, but none of them has yet fulfilled the commercial requiremenTT. A recent ONU report shows several benefits of blue energy harvesting compared to other energy sources. For instance, it is possible to generate power 24/7 without emitting any greenhouse gases and with energy conversion efficiency similar to the other energy sources. This conference session focus on the most know techniques for blue energy harvesting - Pressure Retarded Osmosis (PRO), Reversed Electrodialysis (RED) and, the most recent, Capacitive Mixing (CapMix) – and related materials, systems and technologies.