Co-Production Performance Evaluation of a Novel Solar Combi System for Simultaneous Pure Water and Hot Water Supply in Urban Households of UAE
Water is the most desirable and sparse resource in Gulf cooperation council (GCC) region. Utilization of point-of-use (POU) water treatment devices has been gaining huge market recently due to increase in knowledge of urban population on health related issues over contaminants in decentralized water...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2017-04-01
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| Series: | Energies |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/4/481 |
| Summary: | Water is the most desirable and sparse resource in Gulf cooperation council (GCC) region. Utilization of point-of-use (POU) water treatment devices has been gaining huge market recently due to increase in knowledge of urban population on health related issues over contaminants in decentralized water distribution networks. However, there is no foolproof way of knowing whether the treated water is free of contaminants harmful for drinking and hence reliance on certified bottled water has increased worldwide. The bottling process right from treatment to delivery is highly unsustainable due to huge energy demand along the supply chain. As a step towards sustainability, we investigated various ways of coupling of membrane distillation (MD) process with solar domestic heaters for co-production of domestic heat and pure water. Performance dynamics of various integration techniques have been evaluated and appropriate configuration has been identified for real scale application. A solar combi MD (SCMD) system is experimentally tested for single household application for production 20 L/day of pure water and 250 L/day of hot water simultaneously without any auxiliary heating device. The efficiency of co-production system is compared with individual operation of solar heaters and solar membrane distillation. |
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| ISSN: | 1996-1073 |