A detailed Review of Solar Desalination Systems with Different Enhancement Methods

Abstract

The fresh water resources in the world, are not enough to face the human growth, the increasing of needs and the drought of the climate are increasingly insufficient and moreover threatened by all kinds of pollution. The drinking water crisis is strongly reviving the interest in developing desalination techniques that are less expensive, simpler, robuster, reliabler, if possible, less energy consuming and respectful of the environment. It is in this logic that water desalination stations are part of the process, since they make it possible to produce drinking water from sea water or brackish water using special techniques. Solar distillation is a less energy-consuming desalination method because it uses a free source of renewable energy. Work on conventional solar stills where evaporation and condensation take place in the same enclosure showed that the efficiency is low. The work is then oriented towards the separation of the two phenomena where the efficiency of this type of still is higher. These stills are named as humidification-dehumidification solar stills. These types of stills have been the subject of numerous studies to improve efficiency such that the solar collectors used are flat collectors. In this review paper, different methods and techniques of desalination systems will be present and evaluated with other enhancement methods. Many desalination systems have been developed to overcome the water shortage problem, but most of these techniques require intensive energy. Therefore, utilizing renewable energy for desalination is considered as the most important and economical method for producing potable water with low cost. The conclusions from this review paper is showed the different methods, techniques and enhancement methods for obtaining fresh potable water.