Marisol Cooling

🌊❄️ Marisol Cooling – sea-salt–powered cooling & water systems for hot coastal cities What if coastal districts could cool buildings with seawater, salt and sunlight instead of grid-hungry AC and synthetic refrigerants? Core idea Marisol uses engineered seawater brines as a working fluid in a three-part system: • Liquid desiccant loop – concentrated brines (NaCl + Mg/Ca from seawater or desal brine) dry incoming air, cutting the latent load. • Indirect evaporative cooling + thermal storage – pre-dried air is cooled via indirect evaporation, while salt-hydrate phase-change materials act as a “cold battery” charged at night or with solar heat. • Solar brine regeneration & salt harvest – shallow solar basins reconcentrate the brine and crystallise a fraction of the salt, creating a visible by-product: local sea salt. Compared with conventional vapor-compression AC, this architecture can reduce electricity use for cooling by 50–70% in very hot coastal climates, while keeping indoor comfort in the 23–26 °C range with healthy humidity. Plasma-activated water (PAW) R&D lane We are also exploring plasma-based water treatment as an add-on module. Non-thermal plasma in contact with water generates reactive oxygen and nitrogen species that: • inactivate microbes and biofilms in brine loops, and • help polish greywater or pre-treat streams going to desalination, reducing chemical dosing and improving overall water quality. What we are looking for Marisol is seeking: • Investment to build an integrated lab demonstrator and first coastal pilot, • Collaboration with universities and labs in cooling, desalination and plasma-activated water, and • Partnerships with coastal developers, resorts and EPCs who want a flagship, circular cooling layer for their projects. Sea salt, seawater and sunlight are abundant. Marisol’s goal is to turn them into reliable infrastructure.

🌊⚙️ Marisol for Coastal Compute Infrastructure Data centers convert electricity into computation, and almost all computation into heat. For high-density AI clusters and proof-of-work campuses, heat rejection becomes an energy, water, siting, and permitting problem. A Marisol-type architecture treats coastal compute as a layered thermal system. 1. Clean compute loop Servers remain on closed, high-purity liquid loops. Seawater never enters the white space, protecting chips, cold plates, pumps, dielectric fluids, and electronics from chloride corrosion, scaling, microbes, and salt aerosols. 2. Marine heat-rejection loop Outside the building, heat transfers to seawater through titanium, duplex stainless steel, or polymer-composite heat exchangers. Q = ṁ × cp × ΔT This makes ocean temperature, bathymetry, intake velocity, sediment, biofouling, and thermal-plume dispersion part of data-center engineering. 3. Thermo-chemical interface In-situ electrochlorination can generate sodium hypochlorite from seawater for biofouling control, reducing transported chemical inputs. Hydrogen remains a safety-managed by-product. At high compute densities, liquid-cooled servers can return water at 55-65 °C. This low-grade heat is useful for membrane distillation, liquid-desiccant regeneration, brine concentration, and water recovery. The Marisol thesis: Compute stays clean. The sea takes the heat. Chemistry governs the interface. Waste heat supports water recovery. The strongest use case appears where cheap or stranded power, coastal water scarcity, high heat density, and public-permission constraints converge. In the right coastal regions, data centers can become integrated energy-water-compute infrastructure.

🌊 Morocco bets big on desalination – why it matters for Marisol-type ideas Morocco has announced that by 2030 it aims to cover 60 % of its drinking water from desalinated seawater (up from ~25 % today), powered by renewables. The plan is to reach 1.7 billion m³/year via existing plants, projects under construction and new tenders, including a ~MAD 10 bn (≈ USD 1 bn) plant near Tiznit with 350 million m³/year capacity for cities and farmland. Sources: www.reuters.com/sustainabili..., www.moroccoworldnews.com/2025/12/2706..., www.world-energy.org/article/5467.... For Marisol and similar coastal, climate-resilient building concepts, this is a strong signal: - Large-scale seawater handling + treatment is no longer exotic infrastructure but part of national baselines for water security. - Renewable-powered desalination directly lowers the climate and cost objections to using seawater in cooling loops, grey-water concepts and district-scale systems. - The coupling of urban demand + agriculture around one desal backbone shows how coastal projects could share infrastructure: buildings, ports, farms and industry all drawing from the same resilient water spine. In short: Morocco is turning desalination into a core public-good utility. Marisol-type systems can ride that wave by designing buildings and districts that assume abundant, low-carbon seawater as a primary input – not a last-resort emergency option.

Marisol: When Does “Sea–Salt Cooling” Actually Pay Off? A Marisol-type system will never win a beauty contest on upfront CAPEX alone. For the same 10 MW of cooling, a classic chiller plant might cost 10–15 MUSD; a full Marisol coastal system (seawater intake, brine ponds, DAHU/IEC, PCM storage) is more like 28–40 MUSD. The story flips when you look at what kind of watts you avoid. In a hot-humid coastal grid, Marisol typically: - Cuts cooling electricity use by ≈60% → less fuel burned, fewer blackouts - Shaves 4–5 MW off peak demand for a 10 MW district → fewer transformers, fewer diesel gensets - Eliminates HFC refrigerants → no Kigali/phase-out risk - Uses seawater instead of freshwater for heat rejection → tens of thousands of m³/year saved If your power is cheap and the grid is strong, that’s “nice but not decisive.” If your power is 0.15-0.25 USD/kWh, diesel-backed, or capacity-constrained, it becomes decisive: - Net energy savings alone can reach ~2 MUSD/year for a 10 MW cluster - Add avoided grid upgrades + diesel backup and you’re closer to 2.5–3 MUSD/year in system value - Add 6-8 kt CO₂/year avoided and you’re eligible for climate finance on top In that world, the extra 18-25 MUSD of CAPEX is no longer a sunk cost – it’s a way to buy your way out of future fuel, grid and carbon costs, with payback in roughly 6-9 years and a low-teens IRR over 20 years. So the real investment question isn’t “Is Marisol cheaper than chillers?” It’s: “Where is avoided peak, avoided diesel and avoided CO₂ already more expensive than steel, ponds and pipes?”

Coastal cities as testbeds for “sea–salt cooling” Many of the fastest-growing coastal regions – from the Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea corridor to West and East Africa – share the same constraints: hot-humid climates, fragile power grids, and abundant but underused resources right at the shoreline: seawater, sun, and land for compact infrastructure. A Marisol-type system treats coastal cooling as urban coastal engineering, not just HVAC: -> Intake & marine works Civil engineers design low-velocity seawater intakes, screens and outfalls that avoid erosion, protect marine life and keep thermal plumes within regulatory limits. Bathymetry, sediment transport and storm surge all shape the layout. -> Energy-landscape at the edge Shallow solar brine ponds and crystallisation basins can be integrated into reclaimed land, port backlands or utility corridors. They double as desiccant “factories” and visible blue-green infrastructure, with clear footprints in m² per kW of cooling. -> District-scale distribution From the shoreline, buried pipelines carry tempered seawater or intermediate brine to building clusters (1–3 km range). Trench routing, easements, corrosion protection and leak detection become classic district-cooling design problems – just with saline media. -> Building integration On site, desiccant air handlers and salt-hydrate cold batteries sit in mechanical floors or basements. Structurally, they’re just tanks and air-handling units, but sized and detailed for higher densities and maintenance access rather than high pressures. For Gulf cities, Red Sea industrial zones or emerging ports along the Sub-Saharan coast, this shifts the question from “How many chillers?” to “How do we masterplan a coastal cooling backbone?” – using marine works, land use planning and building services as one integrated system.

Plasma Water Purification – Turning Electricity into Clean Water Chemistry What if we could clean water not by adding more chemicals, but by briefly “touching” it with a controlled lightning-like discharge? Plasma water purification uses non-thermal plasma – an ionised gas created by high-voltage pulses in air or another gas – in direct contact with water. We don’t turn the whole water volume into plasma. Instead, we create tiny plasma regions (above the surface, in bubbles, or in micro-channels) that generate a cocktail of highly reactive species, often called reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS). When this plasma interacts with water, it forms plasma-activated water (PAW) containing radicals and longer-lived oxidants such as H₂O₂, O₃, NO₂⁻ and NO₃⁻. Together they act like a built-in advanced oxidation process: - they deactivate microbes and biofilms by damaging cell walls, proteins and DNA - they break down organic pollutants (pharmaceuticals, dyes, pesticides, odours) into smaller, less harmful molecules, ideally all the way to CO₂, water and inorganic ions In practice, a plasma module would look like a compact reactor: water flows through or past a discharge zone, powered by a high-voltage pulsed supply. No bulk dosing of chlorine or other chemicals is required; the “reagent” is electricity plus air. For coastal or Marisol-type systems, plasma purification could: - keep seawater cooling loops clean by suppressing biofouling - pre-treat brackish or greywater before desalination or reuse - reduce chemical footprints in sensitive marine environments The core promise: use electrons instead of chemicals to drive the water chemistry we want – and power it with renewable electricity.