Analysis of an uncovered photovoltaic/thermal solar system powering a seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant

Water scarcity affects about onebillion people in the world. Around two billion people could be living in water-stressed areas by 2050. For this reason, the desalination is always evolving due to the importance of the water resources found in the seas and brackish water. As these systems are generally energy intensive, the use of a renewable energy source is among the most appropriate solution. In this paper, both experimental and numerical investigations have been conducted to evaluate the performances and the economic viability of aphotovoltaic-thermal collector intended to supply a reverse osmosis (RO) unit. Experimental study is based on the input-output and dynamic system testing (DST)according to ISO 9459-5 standard method and computations use the energy and mass balances of the PV/T collector and the RO plant. Results of DST testing showed that the loss coefficient of the PV/T, the tank loss coefficient and the total tank heat capacity are 10.46 W.m-2.K-1, 1.596 W.K-1 and 388MJ.K-1, respectively. The ability to couple the RO technology to PV/T systems has been demonstrated. The complete system has been simulated for a water salinity of 10,000ppm and climatic data of Borj-Cedria (Tunisia) site (longitude 10° 25' 41″ E and latitude 36° 43' 04″ N). Numerical investigations showed that the electricity needs of a small off-grid desalination unit could be met by using a 6.48m2 PV/T panel surface area. In this case, the purified water produced has a salinity of 1500ppm and the flow rate is 24,000l/day. For a grid connected site, the produced and auxiliary powers are found to be equal to 54% and 21%, respectively. Moreover, the economic cost of adding a PV/T system into an existing RO unit has been evaluated and the results showed that the payback period is 6years.

Experimental evaluation of a multi-skid reverse osmosis unit operating at fluctuating power input

Evaluation of power and freshwater production based on integrated gas turbine, S-CO2, and ORC cycles with RO desalination unit

Ion-exchange membrane electrodialytic salt production using brine discharged from a reverse osmosis seawater desalination plant

Waste energy recovery in seawater reverse osmosis desalination plants. Part 1: Review

ANN based-model for estimating the boron permeability coefficient as boric acid in SWRO desalination plants using ensemble-based machine learning

Our aim was to analyze, monitor, and predict the outcomes of processes in a full-scale seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant using multivariate statistical techniques. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to investigate the performance and efficiencies of two SWRO processes, namely, pore controllable fiber filter-reverse osmosis (PCF-SWRO) and sand filtration-ultra filtration-reverse osmosis (SF-UF-SWRO). Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to monitor the two SWRO processes. PCA monitoring revealed that the SF-UF-SWRO process could be analyzed reliably with a low number of outliers and disturbances. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis was then conducted to predict which of the seven input parameters of feed flow rate, PCF/SF-UF filtrate flow rate, temperature of feed water, turbidity feed, pH, reverse osmosis (RO)flow rate, and pressure had a significant effect on the outcome variables of permeate flow rate and concentration. Root mean squared errors (RMSEs) of the PLS models for permeate flow rates were 31.5 and 28.6 for the PCF-SWRO process and SF-UF-SWRO process, respectively, while RMSEs of permeate concentrations were 350.44 and 289.4, respectively. These results indicate that the SF-UF-SWRO process can be modeled more accurately than the PCF-SWRO process, because the RMSE values of permeate flowrate and concentration obtained using a PLS regression model of the SF-UF-SWRO process were lower than those obtained for the PCF-SWRO process.

Exergy and exergoeconomic evaluation of hydrogen and distilled water production via combination of PEM electrolyzer, RO desalination unit and geothermal driven dual fluid ORC

Seawater pretreatment by continuous sand filter for seawater RO (reverse osmosis) desalination plant

First year performance review of Magong UF/RO Seawater Desalination Plant

Preliminary experimental analysis of a small-scale prototype SWRO desalination plant, designed for continuous adjustment of its energy consumption to the widely varying power generated by a stand-alone wind turbine

Environmental life cycle assessment of seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant powered by renewable energy

A large-scale parallel-unit seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant contains many reverse osmosis (RO) units. If the operating conditions change, these RO units will not work at the optimal design points which are computed before the plant is built. The operational optimization problem (OOP) of the plant is to find out a scheduling of operation to minimize the total running cost when the change happens. In this paper, the OOP is modelled as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem. A two-stage differential evolution algorithm is proposed to solve this OOP. Experimental results show that the proposed method is satisfactory in solution quality.

This paper presents a Photovoltaic (PV) simulation system powering a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination unit with no energy recovery device (ERD). The simulation is carried out using commercial software, Transient System Simulation (TRNSYS®). The PV system consists on solar panels (Siemens SM55) with rated power of 55 W, connected to a storage battery via DC-DC charge controller. The load of this system is a pump, which provides the RO system with feed water. The RO unit is composed of one Filmtec spiral wound membrane. Simulation results for fresh water production showed that with a continuous feed of 1.5 m3h-1, a total capacity production of 110 m3 per year can be achieved. The effect of the main parameters in desalinated water production capacity showed that with the increase of the raw water feed flow and the PV surface, the monthly fresh water production increases. They also showed that with the increase of raw water salinity, the fresh water production decreases. This work is validated with literature experimental results.

Energy consumption assessment of 4,000 m3/d SWRO desalination plants