osmotic_plant.jpgThe world's first osmotic power plant has recently opened in Oslo, Norway. A company called Statkraft unveiled a small scale prototype of an osmotic power plant yesterday. The project will not be able to produce a great amount of energy; initial production is expected to be around 2 to 4 kilowatts. But according to Stein Erik Skilhagen, the person in charge of the project, large-scale energy production has never been the company's aim for the prototype plant. "What's important for now is to test and validate the technology, not to produce a lot [of electricity]," he says.

The company says osmotic power has a potential rated at 1,700 terawatt hour (TWh) of annual energy production. Moreover, unlike wind and sun energy technologies, results don't depend on extraneous natural weather conditions. The technology will utilize the naturally-occurring osmotic process between freshwater and salt water separated by a membrane. In the plant, the process works by installing a turbine at the seawater side. The freshwater on the other side of the membrane is inclined to flow into the sea water side due to the difference in solute content, thereby creating a flow. This flow drives the turbine, which in turn produces the energy.

The prototype plant's current capacity is only enough to run a coffee maker, but the company aims to improve production by creating a more efficient membrane. Statkraft aims to build a commercial-size plant capable of producing 25 MW of electricity (enough to power 10,000 homes) by 2015.