Market and Products
REDstack development and products
REDstack originats as a spin-off company from the water technology institute Wetsus. In 2004, Wetsus institute started the theme 'Blue Energy' with the aim of generating energy from fresh and salt water. It soon became clear that this is a promising development and this was reason for a number of participants in Wetsus to establish REDstack. REDstack is owned by its founder and entrepreneur Pieter Hack: at the moment Pieter’s company W & F Technologies BV is mother and single shareholder of REDstack.
After a period of preparation, a pilot plant in Breezanddijk on the Afsluitdijk was built. The Dutch King Willem-Alexander conducted the grand opening in 2014. The test stacks set up there were developed by REDstack together with several project partners. REDstack is responsible for both the housing of the stacks, application of ion-exchange membranes as well as the entire operation of this plant.
RED
REDstack focuses on delivering the following RED products
- Stacks specifically designed for customer/user deployment
- Basic design of the total installation
- Licenses
Energy from water with RED, market size
From the mixing of 1 m³ of river water with 1 m³ of seawater, 0.5 kilowatt hours of electricity can theoretically be gained at 25 oC. That corresponds to a capacity of 1.8 MW from a flow of 1 m³/s of fresh and 1 m³/s of salt water. In practice, there are all kinds of non-ideal conditions so 1 MW is a more realistic figure. The energy density of this 'fuel' is significantly less than fossil fuels like coal or oil. On the other hand, very large amounts of water are available. The outflow of all the rivers in the world together is 1.13 million m³ per second. This gives a theoretical potential of about 1 TW (1 Terawatt = million megawatts). This is practically equal to the amount of electricity produced today. In theory, all current fossil and nuclear power plants could be replaced by RED power plants. The practice is of course much more difficult. First of all, the efficiency is not 100% and not every river mouth is suitable as a location for this form of energy production. And in the places that would qualify, the environment, shipping and infrastructure would have to be taken into account. Nevertheless, there are many places worldwide where this sustainable renewable energy can be obtained.
It is quite possible to identify a number of promising locations for the application of RED. These are remote places that are not connected to the electricity grid but where fresh and salt water are available. Examples are the vast areas of coastline in far eastern Russia on the Sea of Japan and numerous islands in Oceania, as well as low-lying delta areas. This will also provide populations in these "difficult" areas with reliable, renewable energy.
ED
ED (ElectroDialysis) is a technology for producing fresh water from salt or brackish water. By creating a voltage difference - also in a stack - the ions from the salt water are forced to move through the membranes, thus achieving desalination.