LAUSR

Abstract Large volumetric discharge of river waters into oceans and seas give rise to tremendous mixing energies that can be used to harvest power through technologies like pressure retarded osmosis (PRO). The present effort, for the first time, analyzes seasonal salinity and temperature variations of rivers in estuarine systems and possible impact of the same on feasibility of PRO for generation of power. A case study of eight major rivers in Goa, India, all of which meet the Arabian Sea was adopted for the analysis. After analyzing salinity variations from reported literature, a Gibbs free energy formulation has been implemented to evaluate the energy of mixing emanating for each of the selected rivers mixing with Arabian Sea. Various energies of mixing due to the seasonal fluctuations of salinity and temperature have been evaluated and its impact on design of PRO plants has been analyzed. It was observed that mixing energies are strongly dependent on the salinity gradient than temperature variations. S...