Economic and environmental assessment of the implementation of solar chimney plant for water production in two cities in UAE

Abstract

• Solar chimney power plant (SCPP) system is used to generate electrical power and produce distilled water for different wind speeds in two cities in UAE. • Sharjah and Alain cities in UAE were selected based on the geographic location and metrological data. • Alain city shows more annual electrical power and water production than Sharjah city. • The economic and environmental considerations were evaluated and compared with the reverse osmosis (RO) technique. In this paper, a solar chimney power plant (SCPP) system is modeled and simulated using MATLAB code. The economic and environmental considerations were analyzed for the SCPP. The implementation of the SCPP system in Sharjah and Al Ain cities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were compared in terms of electrical power generation and cumulative water production, as well as the potential of increasing the wind speed by 2.5% - 10% with a step of 2.5%. The selected cities were considered due to the big difference in the relative humidity. The results showed that even though Sharjah’s water production was more stable and consistent, Al-Ain would have significantly higher water production and slightly lower power generation. After increasing the wind speed, both cities showed similar behavior of a significant increase in water production and a slight decrease in power generation. The novel design was analyzed and compared to the reverse osmosis technology from an economic and an environmental perspective. Using the SCPP is in alignment with the 2030 vision of the UAE for both electrical power generation and water production. Furthermore, the SCPP can be an effective solution to solve the demand for energy and water and reduce the effect of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.