Lifetime optimisation of integrated thermally and electrically driven solar desalination plants-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Lifetime optimisation of integrated thermally and electrically driven solar desalination plants

Published:2024-07-16 Issue:1 Volume:7 Page:
ISSN:2059-7037
Container-title:npj Clean Water
language:en
Short-container-title:npj Clean Water

Author:

Winchester Benedict^ORCID,Huang Gan^ORCID,Beath Hamish^ORCID,Sandwell Philip^ORCID,Cen Jiajun^ORCID,Nelson Jenny^ORCID,Markides Christos N.^ORCID

Abstract

AbstractWe 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.

Funder

RCUK | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Royal Society

J.N. thanks the Royal Society for the award of a Research Professorship.

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Link

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-024-00335-4.pdf

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