AQUASOL

The amount of freshwater available has drastically decreased due to rapid population growth, industrialization, and recurring dry extremes. Merely 3% of freshwater makes up all of Earth's water resources, with saline water making up the other 97%. One-fifth of the world's population, according to the World Health Organization, resides in nations where freshwater is scarce. For this reason, desalination of seawateror brackish water is one of the essential solutions to the worldwide problem of water scarcity. However, the main barriers to the general adoption of desalination systems are the substantial upfront technology costs, and the large amount of energy that is needed for the technological processes. The major goal of AQUASOL is to develop a technological platform that enables the massive penetration of renewable energy sources into the desalination technology with no impact on the power network and providing disruptive, energy-efficient solutions for saline/brackish water pre-treatment and filtration, as well as brine and wastewater recycling. The system will be supplied with hybrid energy storage system and connected to the modular fault-tolerant multiport converter. This approach will help not only to reduce number of power electronics converters, provide both long-term and short-term energy storage capabilities, stabilize the system against intermittent renewable energy inputs but also support grid-independent operation in remote or island scenarios. A combination of novel two-dimensional material-based membranes and specific chemicals for seawater and wastewater treatment will be developed. To maintain minimum energy consumption during operation, the model-based energy management system will be developed, too. This closed-loop approach minimizes waste and maximizes resource utilization for irrigation in agriculture. The concept will address and investigate societal challenges of technology adoption and measures to overcome identified challeges