Advances in Engineering Advances in Engineering features breaking research judged by Advances in Engineering advisory team to be of key importance in the Engineering field. Papers are selected from over 10,000 published each week from most peer reviewed journals.
Matthew D. Stuber1, Christopher Sullivan2, Spencer A. Kirk2,Jennifer A. Farrand2, Philip V. Schillaci2, Brian D. Fojtasek2, Aaron H. Mandell1. Desalination, Volume 355, 2015, Pages 186–196.
[expand title=”Show Affiliations”]- WaterFX, Inc., PO Box 2304, Healdsburg, CA 95448, USA.
- ATSI, Inc., 415 Commerce Dr, Amherst, NY 14228, USA. [/expand]
Abstract
The energy–water nexus is addressed with the experimental demonstration of a solar-powered desalination process system. This system was designed for high-recovery treatment of subsurface agricultural drainage water as a reuse strategy as well as other brackish groundwater sources. These water sources may exhibit wide fluctuations in salinity and makeup and pose a high risk for operational troubles due to high scaling potential. A first-of-its-kind open-cycle vapor-absorption heat pump is coupled with a multiple-effect distillation train and a large parabolic trough solar thermal concentrator. Without the heat pump, the distillation operation showed a minimum thermal energy consumption of 261.87 kWhth/m3. With the heat pump, the thermal energy consumption was reduced by more than 49% to 133.2 kWhth/m3. This reduction in thermal energy requirement directly translates into a 49% reduction in solar array area required to power a process with the same freshwater production rate as a system without an integrated heat pump. An optimized design was modeled and the thermal energy performance of a commercial system is projected at 34.9 kWhth/m3 using a 10-effect MED operating at 85% recovery.
