Renewable energy from dilution of salt water with fresh water: pressure retarded osmosis

Italy, with its 7.600 kilometers of coast, is full of fresh water and sea water sources to be exploited for the development and the application of this process. As nuclear energy production is not accepted in Italy at the moment, it is necessary to consider either highly polluting processes or technologies using renewable and non-polluting sources to increase the production of the electric energy in the future. The pressure-retarded osmosis process (PRO) should therefore be taken into great consideration among energy researches for the interest of the whole country. The process is already studied in countries where both salt water and fresh water are available: USA, Israel and Norway [5–7]. In Italy, the CESI has started few years ago a research project in this topic, which was concluded with a lab-scale prototype without further progress.