IBTS Greenhouse
[1][2] It was part of the Egyptian strategy for the afforestation of desert lands from 2011 until spring of 2015, when geopolitical changes like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Sinai Province in Egypt forced the project to a halt.
Afterwards LivingDesert Group including Prof. Abdel Ghany El Gindy and Dr. Mosaad Kotb from the Central Laboratory for Agricultural Climate in Egypt, Forestry Scientist Hany El Kateb, Agroecologist Wil van Eijsden and permaculturist Sepp Holzer was created to introduce the finished project in Egypt.
The generation of liquid water from the atmosphere inside the IBTS requires large amounts of cooling power.
Through the high efficiency, Desalination has become financially and ecologically viable for large scale agriculture, forestry and aquaculture.
Another point of relevance is the creation of a bio-diverse landscape and many jobs instead of smoking chimneys and factories along the valuable waterfront.
Alternative desalination-technologies, air-to-water utilities and desalination-greenhouses in testing, require a multiple of the energy for fresh-water production.
The establishment of closed watercycles being the most crucial of all, because of the increasing severity of the Global Water crisis particularly in hot desert climates.
The industrial-scale desalination is bound to hot climates because it requires high amounts of solar thermal power.
In future versions the IBTS can be deployed in cold climates using extra heat energy sources like compact fusion, or small modular reactors.
In general, it is possible to build the IBTS as solids and liquids waste treatment sites for settlements, hotels, or cities.
The Skyroof is maintained with a special refurbishment and replacement system that can deal with harsh weather and objects landing on the thin foil.
[3] This performance is more than 10 times lower than the records set by desalination plants in Dubai and Perth according to official numbers given by the respective authorities.
Since the first version of the IBTS the atmospheric water generation has evolved through a series of hygrothermal models and can now be operated at 0.45 kwh/m3 according to the developer.
Therefore, it never hits natural, or physical limitations for growth like the desalination technology in the Persian Gulf already has because of brine discharge and temperature rise.
[20][21] The IBTS is operated with electrical and thermal energy produced from windpower and concentrated solar power, on-site (in a proprietary process).
[23] The maximum of 500m³ of freshwater production per day and hectare, multiplies to 0.5 million m³ on 1000 ha, equaling the output of the largest industrial desalination power plants in the world.
This recovered energy is used to heat the brine leaving the Mariculture in the IBTS doubling the daily evaporation of 100m³ and generating salt for sale.
The design points arose out of the computational engineering of the physical model as well as the financial plan in an iterative process.
Because of the independence of primary energy- and material resources, the efficiency of water production and the scalable, modular design the IBTS Greenhouse is sustainable.
For infrastructure developments taking decades for the roll-out and upscaling it is crucial to design in terms of future-readiness, a key engineering principle.
This can only be done by special bots, or drones on the scale that the IBTS was developed for as national desert greening strategy for reclaiming and regreening entire regions.
The most famous example is the Biosphere 2, a research project and demonstration site integrating residential areas into a new type of greenhouse.
The Gardens by the Bay using all of the core design elements of the TSPC Forest City from 2008 like artificial trees with spherical buildings on top is an outstanding example.
