A solar‐driven membrane‐based water desalination/purification system
type: CreativeWork
description: Lack of fresh water has turned into one of the major challenges of the world in the present century. Desalination of brackish or seawater has been proven to be one of the best solutions to cope with this global challenge. Among all the desalination methods, Membrane Distillation (MD) is well known as a cost effective and profitable technology for treating saline water. However, higher energy consumption compared to other separation techniques has been reported as MD’s main drawback. That is why the application of solar energy to provide the thermal energy requirement of MD modules has been the focal point of research in this field in recent years. Despite many studies and efforts that have been conducted to date, solar driven membrane based systems have still many undiscussed aspects. Integrating solar energy and membrane technology is not yet a straightforward matter and has many opportunities for technical and economic improvements. Utilizing new solar technologies, their combination with thermal driven membrane modules, and trying to improve thermal and overall efficiency of this integration can be the bedrock of novel researches. Furthermore, most of the previous studies and research activities have been focused on desalination systems, while the proposed systems have been either inefficient or energy intensive, and other sources for improving water quality such as wastewater is completely under-researched. That is why, this study proposed a novel integrated solar membrane-based desalination and wastewater treatment system taking advantage of technologies such as heat pipes, vacuum tubes, and direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) modules. A theoretical study was considered to firstly investigate the performance and feasibility of the proposed system and secondly to obtain the optimum physical and operational characteristics of both solar and desalination systems. The theoretical analysis was performed by using appropriate energy and exergy equations which …
abstract: Lack of fresh water has turned into one of the major challenges of the world in the present century. Desalination of brackish or seawater has been proven to be one of the best solutions to cope with this global challenge. Among all the desalination methods, Membrane Distillation (MD) is well known as a cost effective and profitable technology for treating saline water. However, higher energy consumption compared to other separation techniques has been reported as MD’s main drawback. That is why the application of solar energy to provide the thermal energy requirement of MD modules has been the focal point of research in this field in recent years. Despite many studies and efforts that have been conducted to date, solar driven membrane based systems have still many undiscussed aspects. Integrating solar energy and membrane technology is not yet a straightforward matter and has many opportunities for technical and economic improvements. Utilizing new solar technologies, their combination with thermal driven membrane modules, and trying to improve thermal and overall efficiency of this integration can be the bedrock of novel researches. Furthermore, most of the previous studies and research activities have been focused on desalination systems, while the proposed systems have been either inefficient or energy intensive, and other sources for improving water quality such as wastewater is completely under-researched. That is why, this study proposed a novel integrated solar membrane-based desalination and wastewater treatment system taking advantage of technologies such as heat pipes, vacuum tubes, and direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) modules. A theoretical study was considered to firstly investigate the performance and feasibility of the proposed system and secondly to obtain the optimum physical and operational characteristics of both solar and desalination systems. The theoretical analysis was performed by using appropriate energy and exergy equations which …
author: Shafieian Dastjerdi, Abdellah
keywords: Heat pipe solar collector, Direct contact membrane, Desalination, Wastewater treatment, Energy Systems, Mechanical Engineering
date published: 2020-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-27T19:22:03Z
provider: Edith Cowan University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia