Reverse osmosis desalination plant driven by solar photovoltaic system-case study

Abstract

A case study of designing of a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant using a Solar Photovoltaic (PV) system is investigated in this work. The RO system is a desalination plant providing pure water to the Shoiaba power generation plant. The system consists of a PV array connected to an inverter for day time or batteries for night time. The PV is designed to meet the high-pressure pumps' load that is about 13649 kWh a day. Because the plant is operated 24 hours a day the PV panels are divided into two parts, one to cover the day time load and the second to cover night load that is stored in batteries. Based on weather conditions of solar radiation of the shortest day and maximum ambient temperature the PV is sizing and a storage system is determined. The system is modeled by the TNSYS software to simulate the performance of the system during the year. The annual performance of system proves that the system is able to meet the required load during the year. It can be concluded that it is a great opportunity to install photovoltaic panels and increase the efficiency of Reverse Osmosis Desalination Plant.