An innovative rearrangement and comprehensive comparison of the combination of compressed air energy storage (CAES) with multi stage flash (MSF) desalination and multi effect distillation (MED) systems

Abstract

Energy and drinkable water are the two critical resources for the world population. Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is one of the best solutions for grid-scale electricity power storage. Besides different technologies of desalination have been proposed until now. Comprehensive scrutiny of an integrated CAES-Desalination has been proposed in this study. This system can produce drinkable water and electricity power at the same time which makes it an ideal system in dry and warm environments. Multi-effect distillation and Multi-stage flash have been simulated and compared as desalination units. CAES system's dissipated heat is consumed as the input heat power of the desalination unit. In this way not only a large amount of potable water is produced but also the CAES performance is improved. The desalination required heat power is supplied in both charging and discharging mode from the compressors' heat exchanger secondary stream and turbine exhaust hot air respectively. The novelty of this paper is in the simulation of the CAES, MED, and MSF systems separately and thoroughly Comparing MED-CAES and MSF-CAES systems and also proposing a new arrangement for CAES-Desalination systems, and analyzing the effect of omitting the CAES system's recuperator and its consequence on system total outputs. The results for this case showed an almost 3 % improvement in roundtrip efficiency in comparison to the one with a recuperator. Also, the distilled water rate is almost 2.5 times of the normal CAES-Desalination system.