Co-Production Performance Evaluation of a Novel Solar Combi System for Simultaneous Pure Water and Hot Water Supply in Urban Households of UAE

Nutakki Tirumala Uday Kumar and Andrew R. Martin
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Nutakki Tirumala Uday Kumar: RAK Research and Innovation Center, American University of Ras Al Khaimah (AURAK), 31208 Ras Al Khaimah, UAE
Andrew R. Martin: Department of Energy Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, S-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-22

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: solar domestic hot water (SDHW); co-production; membrane distillation (MD); solar combi; thermal storage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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