Research on solar dish/Stirling engine driven adsorption-based desalination system for simultaneous co-generation of electricity and freshwater: Numerical investigation

Abstract

Poly-production green systems are recently promising alternatives that could produce various useful energy outputs such as electricity, heat, and distilled water with higher efficiencies, lower costs, and eco-friendly benefits. Considering the superior advantages of the dish/Stirling power cycle and adsorption-based distillation system. This study investigates a detailed theoretical dynamic modeling and performance analysis of an adsorption-based distillation system powered by a solar dish/Stirling engine (ADS-SDSE) for combined electricity and freshwater dual-production. Numerical lumped models for the hybrid system components are developed using MATLAB to evaluate the electrical performance and freshwater production of the proposed ADS-SDSE. The models are considered based on opt-geometric approaches, energy balance analyses, and isotherm adsorption simulation to dynamically simulate the ADS-SDSE operation to analyze its performance under real weather conditions in Tianjin, China, for one complete year. The daily, monthly, and yearly performances of the ADS-SDSE are comprehensively evaluated in terms of net electric power, electrical efficiency, specific distilled freshwater productivity, specific cooling power, and the gained output ratio (GOR) of the hybrid system. It is found that the role of the Stirling engine rejected heat recovery remarkably enhanced the inlet feed hot water temperature feeding the adsorptions beds and became uniformly at (82.6−95 °C) throughout the day. Moreover, the proposed ADS-SDSE can produce an electrical power output of about 23.42 kW with solar to electricity efficiency of 23.40%, specific daily freshwater production (SDWP) of about 11.53 m3 per ton of silica gel, 320 W/kg of silica gel specific cooling power, and 0.62 GOR. Conclusively, it can be inferred that the proposed ADS can be powered efficiently by the waste heat of the solar dish/Stirling engine.