An integrated system of multi effect distillation and wind power system - Evaluation of total energy saving

Abstract

Abstract Due to depletion of freshwater resources in arid and semi-arid regions accompanied with an increase in water demand, the focus is on improving thermal desalination technologies such as multi effect distillation (MED) that are energy intensive. Undoubtedly, this technology plays an important role in generating high quantity of freshwater from saline water resources. To maintain a sustainable seawater desalination technology, this research suggests a new hybrid system of 10 effects of MED and a farm of 100 wind turbines to be instilled in Al-Shuaibah Power Plant located 103 km south of Jedda in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To carry out this proposal, a generic model for MED developed by the same authors and a set of model equations of wind power turbine are embedded in a mathematical framework. The developed framework is then used to carry out a simulation for a given set of seawater characteristics, and input design parameters at different months of the year 2019. The study investigates the average monthly saving of power for the proposed hybrid system compared to a single MED system. It is revealed that the wind turbines can save around 43% of electrical power of MED system in June 2019 based on the mean monthly wind speed.