Solar-Powered Direct Contact Membrane Distillation System: Performance and Water Cost Evaluation

Mujeeb Iqbal Soomro, Sanjay Kumar (), Asad Ullah, Muhammad Ali Shar and Abdulaziz Alhazaa
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Mujeeb Iqbal Soomro: Mechanical Engineering Department, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Campus, Khairpur Mirs 66020, Pakistan
Sanjay Kumar: Mechanical Engineering Department, Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Campus, Khairpur Mirs 66020, Pakistan
Asad Ullah: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Baluchistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences, Quetta 87300, Pakistan
Muhammad Ali Shar: Department of Mechanical and Energy Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Informatics, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 IDP, UK
Abdulaziz Alhazaa: Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 24, 1-20

Abstract: Fresh water is crucial for life, supporting human civilizations and ecosystems, and its production is one of the global issues. To cope with this issue, we evaluated the performance and cost of a solar-powered direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) unit for fresh water production in Karachi, Pakistan. The solar water heating system (SWHS) was evaluated with the help of a system advisor model (SAM) tool. The evaluation of the DCMD unit was performed by solving the DCMD mathematical model through a numerical iterative method in MATLAB software ® . For the SWHS, the simulation results showed that the highest average temperature of 55.05 °C and lowest average temperature of 44.26 °C were achieved in May and December, respectively. The capacity factor and solar fraction of the SWHS were found to be 27.9% and 87%, respectively. An exponential increase from 11.4 kg/m 2 ·h to 23.23 kg/m 2 ·h in permeate flux was observed when increasing the hot water temperatures from 44 °C to 56 °C. In the proposed system, a maximum of 279.82 L/day fresh water was produced in May and a minimum of 146.83 L/day in January. On average, the solar-powered DCMD system produced 217.66 L/day with a levelized water cost of 23.01 USD/m 3 .

Keywords: solar water heating system; SAM software; desalination; MATLAB software (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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