Suncone Uses CSP to Generate Power and Purify Water

The engineering team anticipates that it will be coupled with off-the-shelf membrane filtration or multi-stage flash distillation hardware, depending upon the specific water input sources to be treated. This same design can be used to supplant conventional thermal power system applications, such as pre-heating steam for turbine electricity.

"The potential applications of this invention are remarkable," said David Saltman, CEO of Open Energy, "from water desalination to supplying process heat for power generation."

The functionality of the Suncone CSP system requires the Suncone reflector, a solar tracking devise, a target that absorbs the incident radiation and conducts it into a heat transfer fluid (HTF), and application-specific hardware to interface with a particular water purification system.