Directing the research agenda on water and energy technologies with process and economic analysis

Abstract

Climate change is directly impacting energy consumption, water availability, and agricultural production. Among the global efforts to address the root causes of carbon emissions, numerous emerging technologies have been proposed to accelerate sustainable development for achieving carbon neutrality. While science-based discovery for emerging technologies, such as the development of novel materials, may help enhance sustainable development, analyzing the system design and economic viability is imperative for assessing the feasibility of the technology for upscaling and successful commercialization. Herein, we demonstrate the crucial importance of process modeling and techno-economic analysis by evaluating three emerging technologies at the water-energy nexus: direct seawater electrolysis, salinity gradient energy harvesting, and membrane-based thermal desalination. We show that the synergistic combination of techno-economic analysis and process modeling can effectively assess the potential feasibility of the emerging technologies at the early development stage. We further discuss the challenges of the three emerging technologies in their current states, indicating that they are not economically viable compared to the existing state-of-art technologies. Our study highlights the urgent need for an improved techno-economic approach—coupling process modeling and economic analysis—for the development of emerging technologies at the energy-water nexus.