Solar Energy and Sustainable Development (Dec 2017)
Numerical Simulation of the Integrated Solar/Hybrid Desalination System
Abstract
A mathematical model is developed to predict the performance of the integrated solar/hybrid desalination system. The novel hybrid desalination system in this study consists of multi-stage thermal vapor compression (TVC) system and spiral wound air-gap membrane desalination (AGMD) units. The hot brine rejected from each evaporator stage of TVC system is used as the hot feed to the AGM unit. The parabolic trough collectors (PTCs) field with direct steam generation was considered as solar system. At solar time, the solar field generates a portion of motive steam required to operate the TVC system while the remaining part is generated by the boiler. The results of this study show that the rate of distilled water from TVC system is 3415 L/h (20.56 L/h.m2) and from the AGMD units is 150 L/h (6.944 L/h.m2) and the annual saving of natural gas (NG) consumption by using PTCs field is 24 tons. The economic study has indicated that the benefit/cost ratio from of the use of PTCs field to generate a portion of motive steam is 2.1 and the production cost of 1 m3 of distilled water from AGMD units is 0.9 $ in comparison with 0.45-2.51 $ from different types of water desalination systems.
