Experimental investigation of a reverse osmosis desalination system directly powered by wave energy

Jia Mi, Xian Wu, Joseph Capper, Xiaofan Li, Ahmed Shalaby, Ruoyu Wang, Shihong Lin, Muhammad Hajj and Lei Zuo

Applied Energy, 2023, vol. 343, issue C, No S0306261923005585

Abstract: Powering desalination processes with renewable energy is a promising solution to address the global issue of water shortage with minimum carbon footprint and environmental impact. We experimentally investigate a sustainable reverse osmosis (RO) desalination system directly powered by wave energy. In this system, seawater is pressurized and pumped to a RO desalination module via a piston pump directly driven by an oscillating surge wave energy converter (OSWEC). An accumulator is adopted on the feed inlet to mitigate the pressure fluctuations under time-varying ocean conditions. Meanwhile, a needle valve on the brine outlet is used to adjust the system pressure and water recovery. A 1:10 scaled model was designed, fabricated, and tested in a wave tank based on the Froude scaling law. The optimal specific water productivity (SWP) obtained in the tank tests with 3.5 g/L feed salinity was 2.23 m3/kWh, indicating a full-scale specific water productivity of 0.22 m3/kWh for 35 g/L seawater salinity. The influence of needle valve tuning on the specific water productivity was experimentally investigated and analyzed. Under a specific operational condition, tuning this valve improved specific water productivity by about 17 % and reduced the system pressure by 24 %, thereby avoiding extreme pressure and improving the system’s capability. This pilot study demonstrates that ocean wave energy is a promising source to sustainably power reverse osmosis desalination and provide freshwater water for coastal regions.

Keywords: Desalination; Wave energy converter; Reverse osmosis; Pilot study; Wave tank test (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.121194

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