Abstract
Desalination of seawater driven by solar and other sustainable energy sources could in principle fulfil the growing needs of the world's most water-stressed countries. Reverse osmosis (RO) has become the most efficient process for desalination, making it the technology of choice for use with solar energy, and photovoltaics (PV) has become the most successful technology for solar energy conversion. But despite recent gains in the efficiency of PV-RO, substantial improvements are still possible because of the numerous energy losses occurring between input of sunlight and output of freshwater. This chapter gives an overview of some of the research activities and recent advances that could ultimately result in solar-powered RO systems becoming more than 10 times efficient than today. It also describes advances in waste heat recovery for RO desalination that are yielding greatly improved performance over desalination processes based on distillation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Emerging membrane technology for sustainable water treatment |
| Editors | Rajindar Singh, Nicholas Hankins |
| Place of Publication | Oxford (UK) |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| Pages | 111-134 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 978-0-444-63316-3 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-0-444-63312-5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 18 Mar 2016 |
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Keywords
- desalination
- energy efficiency
- PV
- reverse osmosis
- sustainable energy
- waste heat recovery
Cite this
}
Sustainable energy systems for seawater reverse osmosis desalination. / Davies, Philip A.
Emerging membrane technology for sustainable water treatment. ed. / Rajindar Singh; Nicholas Hankins. Oxford (UK) : Elsevier, 2016. p. 111-134.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
TY - CHAP
T1 - Sustainable energy systems for seawater reverse osmosis desalination
AU - Davies, Philip A.
PY - 2016/3/18
Y1 - 2016/3/18
N2 - Desalination of seawater driven by solar and other sustainable energy sources could in principle fulfil the growing needs of the world's most water-stressed countries. Reverse osmosis (RO) has become the most efficient process for desalination, making it the technology of choice for use with solar energy, and photovoltaics (PV) has become the most successful technology for solar energy conversion. But despite recent gains in the efficiency of PV-RO, substantial improvements are still possible because of the numerous energy losses occurring between input of sunlight and output of freshwater. This chapter gives an overview of some of the research activities and recent advances that could ultimately result in solar-powered RO systems becoming more than 10 times efficient than today. It also describes advances in waste heat recovery for RO desalination that are yielding greatly improved performance over desalination processes based on distillation.
AB - Desalination of seawater driven by solar and other sustainable energy sources could in principle fulfil the growing needs of the world's most water-stressed countries. Reverse osmosis (RO) has become the most efficient process for desalination, making it the technology of choice for use with solar energy, and photovoltaics (PV) has become the most successful technology for solar energy conversion. But despite recent gains in the efficiency of PV-RO, substantial improvements are still possible because of the numerous energy losses occurring between input of sunlight and output of freshwater. This chapter gives an overview of some of the research activities and recent advances that could ultimately result in solar-powered RO systems becoming more than 10 times efficient than today. It also describes advances in waste heat recovery for RO desalination that are yielding greatly improved performance over desalination processes based on distillation.
KW - desalination
KW - energy efficiency
KW - PV
KW - reverse osmosis
KW - sustainable energy
KW - waste heat recovery
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84969219617&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978044463312500005X
U2 - 10.1016/B978-0-444-63312-5.00005-X
DO - 10.1016/B978-0-444-63312-5.00005-X
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:84969219617
SN - 978-0-444-63312-5
SP - 111
EP - 134
BT - Emerging membrane technology for sustainable water treatment
A2 - Singh, Rajindar
A2 - Hankins, Nicholas
PB - Elsevier
CY - Oxford (UK)
ER -