Desalination, 2nd Edition

Chapter 13Solar Desalination

Eydhah Almatrafi¹, D. Yogi Goswami^2*, Mohammad Abutayeh², Chennan Li² and Elias K. Stefanakos²

¹Faculty of College of Engineering at King Abdulaziz University, Rabigh

²Clean Energy Research Center, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida

^*Corresponding author: [e-mail]

Abstract

Extracting fresh water from seawater requires a great deal of energy, both thermal and mechanical. Renewable energy-driven desalination is becoming more viable despite its expensive infrastructure, because it employs free natural energy sources and releases no harmful effluents to the environment. Solar radiation is usually chosen over other renewable energy sources because its thermal energy can be directly applied to drive desalination systems without the inevitable energy loss associated with energy conversion according to the second law of thermodynamics.

Solar desalination systems are classified into direct and indirect processes depending on the energy path to fresh water. Direct solar desalination systems combine solar energy collection and desalination in one process producing fresh water distillate by directly applying collected solar energy to seawater. Solar distillation using a solar still is an example of direct solar desalination. Indirect solar desalination systems comprise two sub-systems: a solar collection system and a desalination system. The solar collection sub-system is used either to collect heat using solar collectors and supply it via a ...