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An assessment of energy, exergy and CO2 emissions of a solar desalination system under hot climate conditions

Research Authors
Hamdy Hassan, Mohamed S Yousef
Research Date
Research Year
2021
Research Journal
Process Safety and Environmental Protectio
Research Publisher
Elsevier
Research Vol
145
Research Rank
1
Research_Pages
157-171
Research Website
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psep.2020.07.043
Research Abstract

In this study, the performance of single slope solar still combined with enhanced condenser and integrated with parabolic trough solar collector (PTC), is assessed based on productivity, energy, exergy, exergoeconomic, and enviroeconomic methodologies. Experiments are conducted using various saline water media inside a basin exposed to the hot weather conditions of Sohag city in Upper Egypt. Several solar still configurations are tested: conventional solar still (CSS), modified solar still (MSS) using aluminum heat sink as enhanced condenser (HSC), modified solar still incorporated with PTC (MSS + PTC), modified solar still comprising sand as a porous media inside the basin (MSS + SD), and modified solar still comprising sand inside the basin and incorporated with PTC (MSS + SD + PTC). The experimental findings revealed that the MSS + SD + PTC achieved the highest freshwater productivity of 4.65 L/m2 in winter and 9.75 L/m2 in summer, leading to an improvement of around 113 % in winter and 146 % in summer compared with the CSS system. The highest increase in energy and exergy output per year is obtained in the case of MSS + SD + PTC at 139 % and 245 %, respectively. Incorporation of PTC into the MSS system for all studied water media is found promising in terms of energy payback time, cost, and freshwater yield compared with MSS without PTC. The exergoeconomic and environmental parameters of the active systems are found more effective compared with those of the passive systems.