Development of a desalination system driven by solar energy and low grade waste heat

Various thermal power systems emit flue gases containing significant amount of waste energy. The aim of this research is to recover a valuable amount of this energy to develop an efficient desalination system coupled with solar energy. Experiments were performed in the month of June 2014 at Al-Qassim, Saudi Arabia (26 degrees 4'53 '' N, 43 degrees 58'32 '' E) for different hot air (waste gas) flow rates and evaporator inlet water temperature to study the effect on daily potable water productivity. The proposed setup comprised an evaporator, condenser, air blower, electric heaters, storage tank and evacuated tube solar collectors. It was found that increasing the hot air flow rate increases the water productivity up to the critical flow rate after which the productivity decreases. Analytical model was developed for this desalination setup and the results were compared to that obtained from experiments. The overall daily (9 AM-5 PM) potable water productivity of the proposed system is about 50 L for corresponding useful waste heat varying from 130 to 180 MJ/day and a global solar radiation on a horizontal surface ranging from 15 to 29 MJ/m(2)/day. Water is produced at the cost of 0.014 USD/L and the fuel saving equal to 1844 kg/h is achieved for the proposed desalination system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.