Simulation of an Innovative Stand-Alone Solar Desalination System Using an Organic Rankine Cycle

Abstract

The rising of the world’s population leads automatically to the rising of water demand. As a consequence the lack of drinking water increases. Since a large part of the world’s population is concentrated in coastal areas, the desalination of seawater seems to be a promising solution. An innovative stand-alone solar desalination system could be used to produce drinking water from seawater. The great advantage of such a system is that it combines efficient desalination technology, reverse osmosis, with a renewable energy source, solar radiation. Thermal energy produced by the solar array evaporates a working fluid, which is used in an organic Rankine cycle that drives the pumps needed for the reverse osmosis process. Due to the fluctuation of solar irradiation, the dynamic simulation of such a system is necessary in order to assure the sufficient supply of water throughout a year. The simulation provides important information for optimum system sizing and design. The aim of this work is to present a modelling of a solar desalination system and to investigate the impact of different working fluids, thermodynamic parameters and cycle variations on the efficiency and water production of such a system.

• An initial version of this paper was published in October, 2005 in the proceedings of SIMS'05, Trondheim, Norway. 

Keywords

• organic Rankine cycle (ORC), desalination, reverse osmosis, solar radiation