Simultaneous production of fresh water and electricity via multistage solar photovoltaic membrane distillation

Wenbin Wang, Yusuf Shi, Chenlin Zhang, Seunghyun Hong, Le Shi, Jian Chang, Renyuan Li, Yong Jin, Chisiang Ong, Sifei Zhuo and Peng Wang ()
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Wenbin Wang: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Yusuf Shi: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Chenlin Zhang: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Seunghyun Hong: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Le Shi: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Jian Chang: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Renyuan Li: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Yong Jin: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Chisiang Ong: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Sifei Zhuo: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Peng Wang: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract The energy shortage and clean water scarcity are two key challenges for global sustainable development. Near half of the total global water withdrawals is consumed by power generation plants while water desalination consumes lots of electricity. Here, we demonstrate a photovoltaics-membrane distillation (PV-MD) device that can stably produce clean water (>1.64 kg·m−2·h−1) from seawater while simultaneously having uncompromised electricity generation performance (>11%) under one Sun irradiation. Its high clean water production rate is realized by constructing multi stage membrane distillation (MSMD) device at the backside of the solar cell to recycle the latent heat of water vapor condensation in each distillation stage. This composite device can significantly reduce capital investment costs by sharing the same land and the same mounting system and thus represents a potential possibility to transform an electricity power plant from otherwise a water consumer to a fresh water producer.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10817-6

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