Using Renewable Energy in Desalination & Reverse Osmosis Powered with Photo-Voltaics


Abstract in English

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 access 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.

References used

Reverse-Osmosis Desalination of Seawater Powered by PhotovoltaicsWithout Batteries - A Doctoral Thesis -A. Murray Thomson
Journal of Oil and Arab cooperation – Volume 34 Issue 127 Fall 2008 – OAPEC
Reverse-Osmosis Desalination of Seawater Powered by Photovoltaics- A prototype for Jordan on the Example of California - Ali Shakouri
Second International Conference on Water Resources and Arid Environments (2006), Test bank demand for water in the Arab World
Article "Optimization of Renewable Energy Systems: The Case of Desalination"; Karim Bourouni

Download