Among other things known about Sahara Desert, we can easily add another one. It’s probably the weirdest place in the world, to grow food mainly because there’s a lot of … umm, desert, because there’s no freshwater but only seawater and because plants don’t usually like excessive heat. And yes, Sahara is the hottest of all deserts.

But what do I know? Technology these days can and will change the way we grow food. The Sahara Forest project (pdf link!!) is planning to build vast greenhouses that will use mirrors to focus the sun’s rays and generate heat and electricity, which would lead to cooler air (humidity) and pure water that will help plants grow.

That’s how a condenser will probably look like

“Plants need light for growth but they don’t like heat beyond a certain point,” said Charlie Paton, one of the Sahara Forest team and the inventor of the seawater greenhouse concept.

There have been quite a few great ideas to use the potential of Sahara Desert. Remember when they said it has the potential to power the whole Europe? You’d better believe it. The total cost of building 20 hectares of greenhouses along with a 10MW CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) scheme would cost around €80m (£65m) which is not much considering that these technologies have already proved their efficiency.

But what’s that CSP?

“Concentrated solar power mirror arrays covering just one per cent of the Earth’s deserts could supply a fifth of all current global energy consumption. And one million tonnes of sea water could be evaporated every day from just 20,000 hectares of greenhouses,” said Neil Crumpton, an energy specialist at Friends of the Earth.

I’m pretty impressed myself, but apparently that’s not the first place where researchers have started such a project, with Tenerife, Oman or the UAE already doing it.

Prepare yourself to buy food at the supermarket labeled Grown in the Sahara Desert. I’d love it!

Source (Image courtesy of antonioperezrio.es)

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