Exploiting the Coandă effect for wind-driven reciprocating RO desalination

A. Garzozi and D. Greenblatt

Energy, 2022, vol. 238, issue PC

Abstract: The urgent need for fresh water remains a strong driver for reverse-osmosis (RO) desalination, but present-day systems are energy-inefficient and produce significant green-house gas emissions. This motivated our research, which introduces and investigates a novel concept for wind-driven RO desalination. It is based on the Coandă effect, applied periodically by blowing slots on a spring-stabilized vertical cylinder, to produce reciprocating motion that drives RO piston pumps. The Coandă-based Reciprocating (CoRe) system converts wind energy directly to mechanical pumping energy thereby eliminating generator and motor inefficiencies. A small-scale (2-m high) system was constructed and evaluated in an open-jet wind tunnel. It delivered 2–6 bars of water pressure with a net power efficiency of up to 4% depending on wind speed and circulation control parameters. A mathematical model of the system produced excellent correspondence with the experimental data. It was determined that the experimental setup and slot design biased the results negatively and model predictions based on published Coandă data indicated net power efficiencies up to 20%. It was also determined that the slot design details had a decisive effect on performance.

Keywords: Wind energy; Reverse osmosis desalination; Coandă effect; Active flow-control; Oscillating wind energy generation systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221022118
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:238:y:2022:i:pc:s0360544221022118

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.121963

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().