Abstract
Fresh water is crucial for life, supporting human civilizations and ecosystems, and its production is one of the global issues. To cope with this issue, we evaluated the performance and cost of a solar-powered direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) unit for fresh water production in Karachi, Pakistan. The solar water heating system (SWHS) was evaluated with the help of a system advisor model (SAM) tool. The evaluation of the DCMD unit was performed by solving the DCMD mathematical model through a numerical iterative method in MATLAB software®. For the SWHS, the simulation results showed that the highest average temperature of 55.05 °C and lowest average temperature of 44.26 °C were achieved in May and December, respectively. The capacity factor and solar fraction of the SWHS were found to be 27.9% and 87%, respectively. An exponential increase from 11.4 kg/m2·h to 23.23 kg/m2·h in permeate flux was observed when increasing the hot water temperatures from 44 °C to 56 °C. In the proposed system, a maximum of 279.82 L/day fresh water was produced in May and a minimum of 146.83 L/day in January. On average, the solar-powered DCMD system produced 217.66 L/day with a levelized water cost of 23.01 USD/m3.
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.
