Abstract
Improving the efficiency and sustainability of water treatment technologies is crucial to reduce energy consumption and environmental pollution. Solar-driven devices have the potential to supply off-grid areas with freshwater through a sustainable approach. Passive desalination driven by solar thermal energy has the additional advantage to require only inexpensive materials and easily maintainable components. The bottleneck to the widespread diffusion of such solar passive desalination technologies is their lower productivity with respect to active ones. A completely passive, multi-effect membrane distillation device with an efficient use of solar energy and thus a remarkable enhancement in distillate productivity has been recently proposed. The improved performance of this distillation device comes from the efficient exploitation of low-temperature thermal energy to drive multiple distillation processes. In this work, we analyze the proposed distillation technology by a more in-depth thermodynamic detail, considering a Second Law analysis. We then report a detailed exergy analysis, which allows to get insights on the production of irreversibilities in each component of the assembly. These calculations provide guidelines for the possible optimization of the device, since simple changes in the original configuration may easily yield up to a 46% increase in the Second Law efficiency.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
