More than 1,400 geothermal sites has been identified in Mexico (Torres, 2000), most of them inland located and manly dedicated to the power generation, since Mexico has more than 840 MW of geothermal installed capacity. However, at east Pacific Rise along of the Baja Peninsula allocate several geothermal marine resources where a continuous heat and hot water discharge occurs just on the seashore. Most of these submarine hydrothermal systems are located near important tourist and recreations areas where neither potable-water nor power electricity are available.
Mexico’s National University (UNAM) through the IMPULSA Program has been working with local scientist and engineers in order to use these extensive but not well assessed geothermal resources.
Geological and geophysics studies are conducted to identify and characterize underground structures governing heat and water movement along with chemical geothermometer behavior.
The aim of this work is to assess geothermal potential projects to use hot seawater through a new thermal process, MED (multi effect desalination) and MSF (multi stage flash) mixture, in order to desalinate just using the hot seawater as heat source with very little energy consumption avoiding the use of steam, reducing the cost of the product water and promoting the use of renewable resources. The innovation introduced in the design was the use of hot seawater to heat all the chambers, not just the first one (steam) as in a conventional MED plant. Prototype desalination plant design has already been achieved and the extensive Lab tests shown very promise results.
