Water Desalination for Environment-Friendly Cities Using Clean and Green Renewable Energy-Based Processes

Abstract

Given the continuous scarcity of drinkable water and the exceptional rise of the planet temperature, environment-friendly solutions for potable water production are searched for within the concept of green cities which resolve the need without aggravation of the impact on the environment. Drinking water consumption rises increasingly in our planet given the dense use in industrial and agricultural sector and increase of the world population. A review of the vast literature available on solar distillation systems has revealed the main efficiency challenge in terms of low freshwater production of units. Current research work is focusing on improving the productivity and the thermal efficiency of the distillation process. The proposed new design of solar desalination units allowed an optimization technique to the conventional solar still design by the coupling and the integration of a condenser, a solar air, water collector, and a humidifier. The developed design for the proposed desalination technique produced a patented process called solar multiple condensation and evaporation cycle (SMCEC) which showed better performance than the classical solar still techniques. Optimization of the system performance is boosted with a mathematical modeling of the process and system components validated with experimental measurements on prototype and pilot units.