Hybrid renewable energy systems for desalination

Abstract

Water and energy are two key factors in human life that always control the growth and development of human societies. Climate changes, increasing the population in urban areas and industrialization, have increased the demands for freshwater around the world. Estimates show that a small percentage of all freshwater produced in the world is from renewable sources. By developing the technology, lowering equipment prices and increasing attention to the environmental problems of fossil fuels, utilizing renewable energy is growing. By providing a wide variety of conventional desalination methods driven by various types of renewable energy technologies in the world, water and energy legislators should choose different methods to meet the needs based on the local potentials by paying attention to the desalination processes and power systems. In some cases, concentrated solar power for thermal desalination or electricity generated by the photovoltaic plants for membrane desalination systems can be used in arid areas. Definitely, the most problem of using renewable sources is their unsteady natures, which using storage systems or combining with other renewable sources can solve this problem. This chapter provides extensive information about renewables, desalination and performance analysis of power systems. Reverse osmosis technique is a practical process in desalination which 69% of desalination plants use this system. Solar energy is an important source of energy for hybrid systems. The geothermal has a steady performance at a specified depth. Ultimately, obtained results from energy and exergy analysis would have provided a better insight.

Renewable power sources in coastal areas. A viability assessment in the scope of needs and regulations

“…SPRA access conditions are met for the hybrid power plant under analysis [4]. [9,10] and OPEX values [11][12][13] have been analyzed and evaluated for the designed power and desalination capacity (430 m 3 /d) 2 [4,5]. Table 1 summarizes related results.…”

How to Use Wind Power Efficiently for Seawater Reverse Osmosis Desalination

“…With J w available, the value of C p can then be evaluated using Equation (5). The RO process is governed by mass and water balances given by Equation (11) and Equation 12…”

“…have been investigated [6] [7] [8] [9]. Energy from PV and Wind has been the most applied to power RO desalination plants [10] [11] [12] [13]. On one hand, albeit the existence of solar powered desalination plants, they require a very high cost of investing capital in the PV arrays, invertors and regulators.…”

Commercial Thermal Technologies for Desalination of Water from Renewable Energies: A State of the Art Review

“…In some places, fresh surface or groundwater is abundant in sparsely populated places, such as northern Russia, Scandinavia, Canada, Alaska, and parts of southern South America. In contrast, there are densely populated areas with growing industrial areas, located in sites with a low fresh water availability; consequently, subjected to a high degree of water stress according to the relationship between demand for water and amount of water available [1]. According to the United Nations, more than 2 billion people live in countries that experience high water stress [2], an aggravated situation if UNESCO's projections for the period from 2017 to 2028 are considered, where it predicts a greater demand for water not only for agriculture, whose consumption is 70% of the demand worldwide, but also for energy production and generation [3].…”