DEEP OCEAN WATER RESOURCES of GRAND BAIE and TRIOLET, MAURITIUS

The Grand Baie/Triolet region on the northwest side of Mauritius is particularly well known to tourists -- the greatest concentration of resort hotels on Mauritius can be found along this stretch of coastline, characterized by beautiful strands of white sand beaches fronted by crystal clear waters over narrow coral flats and a fringing reef with deep indigo blue waters just offshore, and backed by swaying coconut palm trees, swishing ironwood pines, and gently sloping sugarcane fields further inland...

To the north, beautiful rocky islets can be seen, with names like "Gunner's Quoin", "Serpent Island", and "Round Island"... These lie perched atop a shallow shelf extending northward from from Mauritius, following the island's gentle north slope. This view (above) is from Cannonier's Point, a beautiful headland which shares old and new with the ruins of French and English fortifications and a large luxurious resort hotel known as "Le Cannonier"...

On the west side, however, the bottom drops off rapidly from the edge of the fringing reef to great depths. It is from this direction that deep ocean waters would be most easily accessible. The most valuable application here would be to provide air conditioning to larger resort hotels that presently utilize central air conditioning systems with energy-intensive compressors to cool freshwater which circulates to individual rooms. The bay pictured above is between two of the larger hotels in this area, Le Cannonier and Club Med, which both utilize these large, conventional air conditioning systems. Deep ocean water is particularly close to this bay, which could serve as an ideal site for a resource development project that would bring environmentally sustainable air conditioning to these large hotels and others in the region.

Wilton and Associates, a consulting company based in Port Louis, Mauritius, recently completed a study on the power demands of 17 large hotels in the Grand Baie/Triolet region. This study was commissioned by a developer based in Mauritius, who learned of CHC's development efforts for deep ocean water, and was intrigued by the possibilities for application of environmentally sustainable and inexpensive air conditioning technology that would use deep ocean water. The study found that present demands for air conditioning account for an average of 50-percent of the electric bills these hotels pay in the summer season.

The study found that the yearly consumption of electicity for air conditioning in these hotes was on the order of 21,000,000 kilowatt-hours, which represents a cost of about 42,000,000 Rupees (about 2.1 million U.S. dollars). But with the energy efficiency of deep ocean water applied to air conditioning, an efficiency of 9 to 18 times that of conventional compressor technology for air conditioning could be realized, representing a YEARLY savings of as much as 2 million U.S. dollars if deep ocean water systems were to be developed for this purpose alone! Of course, as demonstrated elsewhere, there are many other applications of deep ocean water, including agriculture for non-tropical crops, freshwater generation, power generation, aquaculture, and others, the fruits of which would almost certainly be consumed by the hotels themselves, and add dimension to environmentally sustainable development implemented in a first-class setting as serve as an attractive example for the world, through the eyes of world-class tourists who travel from all points of the globe to vacation in Mauritius.

Just as Mauritius led the international community by being the first nation to ratify the recent Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), arising from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), so too can Mauritius now lead the world by combining environmentally sustainable development with the idyllic setting of the shores of Grand Baie and Triolet for all the world to see...

What do YOU think???? Your input is welcomed and your comments appear below...

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