International Journal of

ADVANCED AND APPLIED SCIENCES

EISSN: 2313-3724, Print ISSN: 2313-626X

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 Volume 8, Issue 8 (August 2021), Pages: 63-70

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 Original Research Paper

 Title: Multi-effect evaporator desalination powered by geo-solar thermal energy

 Author(s): Ibrahim Alenezi *

 Affiliation(s):

 Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science, Faculty of Engineering, Northern Border University, Arar, Saudi Arabia

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 * Corresponding Author. 

  Corresponding author's ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5169-3028

 Digital Object Identifier: 

 https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2021.08.009

 Abstract:

The abundance of solar energy in Saudi Arabia makes it the most promising option for use in water desalination. A salinity gradient solar pond (SGSP) is one of the most encouraging direct solar heat collectors. Increasing the gradient zone depth of the SGSP to 0.6m allows it to sustain the low operating temperature of single-or multi-effect evaporators (MEE) for 9 months of the year. The unique innovation of utilizing the heat of deep well water to support the operation of a system with such a low operating temperature provides feed water at up to 55°C, which means only 11.2kJ of heat energy is required to heat each 1kg of water to the MEE’s evaporation temperature. This is 9.7% of the energy required when using surface seawater. A MATLAB simulation tool was developed to model the coupling of an SGSP with an MEE and was validated with experimental data collected for the climatic conditions of Saudi Arabia. It is well known that a conventional thermal desalination plant is cost-intensive, but the coupling model study of SGSP–MEE shows its operational feasibility at much lower costs. 

 © 2021 The Authors. Published by IASE.

 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

 Keywords: Geo-solar desalination, Multi-effect, Solar pond, Renewable energy

 Article History: Received 7 February 2021, Received in revised form 30 April 2021, Accepted 19 May 2021

 Acknowledgment 

No Acknowledgment.

 Compliance with ethical standards

 Conflict of interest: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

 Citation:

 Alenezi I (2021). Multi-effect evaporator desalination powered by geo-solar thermal energy. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 8(8): 63-70

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 Figures

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 Tables

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