California Man wants to build a huge solar distiller | Alternative Energy | Forums

everyone keeps saying desalination plants won't work because they are to energy intensive

Healdsburg’s Aaron Mandell wants to build a $30 million desalination plant in the San Joaquin Valley that would use the warmth of the sun to distill former irrigation water and reuse it on thirsty farms.

Mandell, an engineer and former Boston resident who has helped start a half-dozen companies, is the second Sonoma County entrepreneur with a business that takes an unorthodox approach to desalination — and who sees opportunity in a historic drought for boosting fresh water supplies.

“I don’t think the problem is going away anytime soon,” said Mandell, chairman and co-founder of WaterFX, a startup that now operates a trial plant in remote farmland along Highway 5 about 60 miles west of Fresno.

The solar distillation plant’s most striking feature may be its SkyTrough, a curved, reflective channel longer than a football field that can heat a pipe filled with mineral oil to roughly 660 degrees Fahrenheit. That is far hotter than needed to distill water that has been tainted not only with salt but also with such chemicals as boron and selenium.

With water shortages seemingly a way of life, California should imitate Israel in using desalination so successfully that it could become a water exporter, Mandell said. But the state’s businesses and municipalities need to do so in a way that doesn’t increase greenhouse gases and exacerbate climate change.

“The way to do that is to use a clean energy source that’s truly sustainable,” he said. For Mandell, sunshine fits the bill.

Four years of drought are prompting Central Valley farmers to look for new ways to meet their water needs.

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