The rising in the world’s population leads automatically to the rising in water demand. As a consequence
the lack of drinking water increases Currently, approximately 1.2 billion people globally (one-sixth of the
world’s population) do not have acc
ess to adequate clean water. Since a large part of the world’s
population is concentrated in coastal areas, the desalination of seawater seems to be a promising solution,
especially in our Arab world. An innovative stand-alone solar desalination system could be used to
produce drinking water from seawater or any brackish water sources. The great advantage of such a
system is that it combines efficient desalination technology, reverse osmosis, with a renewable energy
source. The main goal is to improve the technical feasibility of such systems, There are many advantages
of this coupling with RE resources ; first of all we separate the drinking water from the electricity grid
and its faults, save burning the fossil fuel and its emissions, and provide fresh water to remote
communities that do not have sufficient traditional energy sources. But as we see in this study we don’t
have economic benefit; because these projects depend on the electricity cost in each country and the
location and its solar specifications.
We designed and implemented a small laboratorial model for PV-RO (Photo-Voltaic Powered Reverse
Osmosis) to recognize the performance for seawater and brackish water, we faced some problems such as
embargo on Syria; so have done project using affordable local potentialities, but we craved to keep the
principle of operation, so we make it for the tap water which close to brackish.
Poly(vinyl alcohol)(PVA)/cellulose acetate(CA) composite membranes were
preparedfor metal ions removal from water.
The top layer was modified by polyethylene glycol and glycerin,then irradiated with
32[J/cm2] photo dose to improve adequate selecti
vity for metal ions separation.
The flux of water increased with increasingoperating pressure, and the maximum
value of flux was 200[L/m2.h] at 4[bar] for the membrane(PVA68/PEG17/G15), but this
membrane tear after applying pressure above 4[bar], while composite and CA membranes
served for long time at pressures higher than (4[bar]).
The rejection of ions decreased as the feed water pressure increased. The maximum
percent retention of ions was found to be 97% for Pb+2, 96% for Cu+2, and 95% for Co+2at
pressure of 2[bar] in composite membrane.
