A Review on PV-RO Process: Solution to Drinking Water Scarcity due to High Salinity in Non-Electrified Rural Areas

Abstract

Desalination of brackish groundwater has emerged as a major option to overcome water scarcity, since quantity and quality of surface water is not appropriate for continuously growing water demand of two third of world's population. Photovoltaic (PV) solar energy powered reverse osmosis (RO) system can be the best option in secluded and isolated areas of the world that are suffering from a shortage of electricity energy and drinking water. This technique is likely to be the lowest energy demanding technology among other desalination techniques. Further, adopting measures like energy recovery devices, hybrid pretreatment process and battery-less system reduces overall cost of the system. But, the capital cost of the system is still too high to support this technology competitively in the market. In the present paper, a review of the PV-RO systems employed for drinking water treatment in non-electrified rural areas of developing countries has been provided. The status of development in the last few years, along with the attempts towards finding rational solutions for cost reduction are also summarized.

Passive solar high-yield seawater desalination by modular and low-cost distillation

“…The distilled water could also be used to sustain permanently floating gardens (see km 2 ), which has been exploited as freshwater emergency reserve during the recent drought in the Rome area. 27 Note that the modular distiller may be also suitable to treat different feed water types in non-coastal areas, for instance mining, municipal or industrial wastewater. 28-30…”

Nexus approach to solar technology for energy and water supply for sustainable rural development in Egypt: a review

“…Small-scale and pilot-scale plants have been investigated since the 1980s, 127 and the World's first Solar PV powered seawater RO plant was built in 1982. 128 Compared to MED and MSF, RO is the most energy-efficient process, and, depending on the feed water type, higher (6 to 8 Mpa) or lower (0.6 to 3 Mpa) feed pressures for seawater or brackish water, respectively, are needed, where energy can be provided by PV systems. Gargh and Joshi 128 provided a review of PV powered brackish and seawater RO desalination plants.…”

Power generation on a solar photovoltaic array integrated with lighter-than-air platform at low altitudes

“…Meanwhile it causes a shift in operating voltage to a lower value by ∆V [21. Patnaik,12]. Hence an alternative scheme is proposed by Nimni Shmilovitz,12].…”

“…Complications arising from Doppler effect between the satellites and the ground station while harvesting and transmitting the space based solar power (SBSP) has also been investigated [4. Goh,12]. However technical issues regarding losses in the energy conversion and transmission, safety concerns (while microwave beam linking between satellite and ground) and implementation cost have resulted in scarce implementation of this idea.…”