An efficient solar water desalination system using natural vacuum pressure

Abstract

An innovative design of a solar natural vacuum desalination (SNVD) system is proposed and investigated. To obtain a vacuum pressure in a desalination chamber its height is considered as 9.5 m. The waste heat in the system is efficiently utilized for both brine and distilled water. Seawater is preheated by the produced warm water, then, it is heated again by the outlet rejected hot brine before it is charged into the evaporation chamber. In addition, inlet pure water to a flat-plate collector is preheated by the condensation latent heat of the evaporated vapor from the evaporation chamber. Later, the outlet hot water from the collector is used as a heat source to the evaporation process. An optimum design of the system components was provided under the actual weather conditions for the shortest day of the year. It was found that the collector area is required to be 23 m2 to produce 66.6 liter of distilled water during. A mathematical modeling of the system was provided to establish a transient simulation and investigate the hourly performance of the system. Based on the annual performance of the system, the system can produce 76.5 liter of distilled water daily that is corresponding to 3.5 liter per one quadratic meter of collector. The annual average specific productivity of the system is obtained as 1.44 liter per kWh of solar radiation. Moreover, the maximum annual production is estimated as 92.88 liter of distilled water per day. Accordingly, the evaporation ratio (ER) is dependent on the solar irradiation and the annual average is found 0.0175 (or 1.75 %) where the gain output ratio (GOR) was estimated as 0.97 on yearly average basis.

Effect of vacuum desalination on heat exchange parameters

“…If one of these conditions cannot be met, an additional vacuum pump must be installed. Therefore, if the required pressure cannot be reached, but within the required time, a pre-vacuum pump is switched on [8,9].…”

“…The thermal scheme in figure 1 consists of a desalination machine, a heat exchanger and a water collection tank, as well as various pipelines through which the working fluid circulates [8,9]. Unlike the initial data, we use an electric heat exchanger, where the heating water is heated.…”