Lifetime optimisation of integrated thermally and electrically driven solar desalination plants
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Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
We compare the performance of photovoltaic (PV), flat-plate and evacuated-tube solar-thermal (ST), and hybrid photovoltaic-thermal (PV-T) collectors to meet the energy demands of multi-effect distillation (MED) desalination plants across four locations. We consider three scales: 1700 m3day-1, 120 m3day-1 and 3 m3day-1. We find a strong
dependence of the capacity and configuration of the solar collectors on both the cost of sourcing electricity from the grid and the specific collector employed. We find specific costs as low as 7.8, 3.4 and 3.7 USDm-3 for the three plant capacities. We find that solar-driven systems optimised for the lowest specific cost result in CO2eq emissions equal to, or higher than, those from grid-driven reverse osmosis
(RO) and in line with PV-RO. This highlights the need to consider the environmental footprint of these systems to ensure that desalination is in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 6.
dependence of the capacity and configuration of the solar collectors on both the cost of sourcing electricity from the grid and the specific collector employed. We find specific costs as low as 7.8, 3.4 and 3.7 USDm-3 for the three plant capacities. We find that solar-driven systems optimised for the lowest specific cost result in CO2eq emissions equal to, or higher than, those from grid-driven reverse osmosis
(RO) and in line with PV-RO. This highlights the need to consider the environmental footprint of these systems to ensure that desalination is in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 6.
Date Issued
2024-07
Date Acceptance
2024-05-14
Citation
npj Clean Water, 2024, 7
ISSN
2059-7037
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
npj Clean Water
Volume
7
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Identifier
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-024-00335-4#Abs1
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
65
Date Publish Online
2024-07-16