Photovoltaic powered Reverse osmosis

18 percent of world’s population do not have access to clean supply of fresh water(WHO

and UNICEF , 2006). Majority of those percentage are form small remote cities far away from the

main water grid. Population growth and global warming(UN , 2007) may cause the increase of

people who do not have access to adequate source of fresh water so having an alternative source

of water solution are needed for these cities.

Locations whose far away from populated areas are near to a source of seawater. A small-

scale reverse osmosis desalination can supply them fresh water for those affected areas. Reverse

osmosis systems need diesel generators or electricity provided by grid power. Diesel generators

provide air pollution to the environment and diesel fuel is expensive. Grid power from isolated

areas either may not be available or expensive. A possible solution with great potential is using a

photovoltaics instead of diesel or grid power to operate reverse osmosis desalination systems.

There are known desalination technologies to yield fresh water for large communities.

Those technologies are reverse osmosis and thermal desalination. Thermal processes only apply

to large scale communities but not for small isolated areas. Reverse osmosis works for both cases

due to high demand for smaller communities.

Photovoltaic reverse systems have already been offered (S. Cheah, 2004). A group of

photovoltaic batteries to operate a reverse osmosis system is used earlier. Using those said methods

were found to be expensive and inefficient. Increasing its efficiency were the focus of recent

research and it turn out to have some success(Spectra Watermakers,2009). Now, PVRO systems

excluding the batteries is now the center of research.(S. Dallas et al, 2009)
 Those researches prove that photovoltaic reversed osmosis systems are possible to operate

with an acceptable expense but it should have economical and conventional method. In this study,

the economic feasibility of the said system for small areas has been reviewed (A. Bilton et al ,

2011). And the results show that it has limitation for multiple communities.

Increasing the amount of location for photovoltaic systems areas means increasing the

efficiency. Most of the studies done is focused on improving individual components’ efficiency,

such as solar cells and RO membranes but small researches has been made to improve the overall

efficiency of the PVRO system.

Solar radiation is one of the main problems faced with small scale photovoltaic reversed

osmosis systems. It interprets that it requires the system’s setting to adapt to produce water

production as many as possible. Those system’s settings are water salinity and temperature and air

temperature. One possible solution is to use batteries for it to store energy but it is expensive and

have limited lifeline. One way taken here consider the system to operate without batteries. The

settings must adapt continuously to increase the water output for it to attain the water quality and

extending the life of the system.

A feasibility study was being carried out as in this literature review (A. Bilton et al , 2011).

As reviewed above, the photovoltaic reverse osmosis system has now advanced compared at the

past and it shows good potential to be feasible. It must be economy wise for it to be applicable. A

feasible study was conducted on countries like Oman, Greece, and the United Arab Emirates (Z.

Al Suleimani and N.R. Nair, 2000). The result shows that the location is dependent whether the

PVRO system to be feasible or not. A study that focused on geographical location has not yet been

done.
 In this feasibly study, a method was made to check the areas for it to be economic feasible

in a small scale photovoltaic reverse osmosis system. Analogizing the produced water cost of

photovoltaic reversed osmosis and the usual method is the method of this feasibility study.

Transporting fresh water or by diesel powered water desalination is a usual way to give fresh

supply of water to areas where water is scarce. The expense where areas with photovoltaic reverse

osmosis systems are feasible is less than the expense of fresh water being transported. Also, the

total cost of PVRO system in its lifetime is less than the cost of having an RO system powered by

diesel.

To decide whether the system is feasible, we calculate the total expense of both PV

powered and diesel powered RO systems on their lifecycle. The total expense was broken into two

components: the operating expenses and system capital expenses. The said expenses are judged

based on water demands, solar sources and water characteristics.

A simple diagram of the photovoltaic reversed system is shown in Figure 2.# (A. Bilton et

al , 2011). The diagram shows that the power source differentiates the two systems. In the figure,

it shows the process where the power source and water go through. The water pass through the RO

membrane by high pressured force created by a pump. High concentrated brine solution stays on

the membrane and passes through a turbine to recover lost energy.

 Figure2.#. Simple photovoltaic reverse osmosis system

The RO capacity, size of array of solar cells, size of the diesel generator, and the

consumption of fuel for a certain water production and location was analyze. The PV powered

system runs only during daytime because it has no batteries. The diesel engine was assumes that

it operates on a full 24 hours on a day. Government taxes were not included in the calculations.

Getting the annual cost of diesel powered and photovoltaic reverse osmosis produced water was

found using the EAC method (H.M. Ettouney et al, 2002). It shows that the water from

photovoltaic powered system is cheaper than the diesel powered system produced by diesel engine

and transported water.

Water quality (15) and information about geographical location on solar insolation(NASA,

2009) were used in the analysis. The main parameters used on cost analysis are shown in (A. Bilton

et al , 2011)Table 1.
 Table 2. Input parameters for seawater reverse osmosis analysis

On figure 2.# (A. Bilton et al , 2011). It shows the total cost of water produce. Based on

the figure, places near the equator are able to produce fresh water less than $6.00/m3. Areas with

scarce supply of water such as in the Middle East costs $5 per cubic meters.

Figure 2.# . Cost of Water for solar powered system

On figure 2.# (A. Bilton et al , 2011), it shows that the photovoltaic reversed osmosis

system is more economic wise than the diesel powered system.

 Figure2.# . Areas with solar powered system of water production.

On table 2, it shows the information of locations. The areas with high concentration of

saline requires more energy for reverse osmosis while with low exposure of sunrays are not

recommended on solar powered systems. Photovoltaic reverse osmosis is cost effective on high

solar insolation areas.

Table 2. Site analysis

 An experiment was done by Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Photovoltaic

reverses osmosis using PV panel, RO membrane, DC pumps, electronic controls and a plastic

water tanks. On figure 2.# (A. Bilton et al , 2011) is the layout of the experiment where there are

18 sensor applied to it for information. On Figure2.# (A. Bilton et al , 2011) shows the layout of

the sensors used.

Figure 2.# Experimental Layout

Figure 2.# Experimental sensors for data acquisition
 On figure 2.#, (A. Bilton et al , 2011)it shows the solar radiation received by the solar

panels. It is conducted mostly on a sunny weather during the day and under different weather

conditions. On figure 2.#, (A. Bilton et al , 2011) it shows the water production based on a

mathematical model and experiment data. Both cases are somehow similar with a difference of

5%. It produces 300L of clean water. On figure 2.#, (A. Bilton et al , 2011) it shows the efficiency

of a PVRO system based on a math model and experiment data. Both cases are almost similar. The

specific energy ranges from 4kwh/m3 and 2.5kwh/m3 which is reasonable.

Figure 2.# Solar Insolation received

Figure 2.# Water produced
 Figure 2.# Efficiency of PVRO System

To conclude this review, it is determined that a feasible PVRO system is dependent on

geographical locations. Also, it is feasible on a small scale on a small community. On the

experiment, it shows promising result with a mathematical model. Efficiency should be focused

on next PVRO studies or researches.

References

*World Health Organization and UNICEF, Meeting the MDG drinking water and sanitation

target, 2006, http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/monitoring/jmpfinal.pdf

*United Nations, World Water Day 2007 Brochure – Coping With Water Scarcity, 2007,

http://www.unwater.org/wwd07/downloads/documents/wwd07brochure.pdf,

*D. Harold and A. Neskakis, A small PV-driven reverse osmosis desalination plant on the island

of Gran Canaria. Desalination, 137 (2001) 285-292.

*Spectra Watermakers, SSW 3500 Datasheet, 2009,

http://www.spectrawatermakers.com/landbased/products_ssw3500.php,

*S. Dallas, N. Sumiyoshi, J. Kirk, K. Matthew and N. Wilmot, Efficiency analysis of the

Solarflow — An innovative solar-powered desalination unit for treating brackish water.

Renewable Energy, 34(2) (2009) 397-400.

*A. Bilton, S. Dubowsky, R. Wiesman, A. Arif and S. Zubair, On the feasibility of community-

scale photovoltaic-powered reverse osmosis desalination systems for remote locations,

Renewable Energy,

*Z. Al Suleimani and N.R. Nair, Desalination by solar powered reverse osmosis in a remote area

of Sultanate of Oman. Appl. Energy, 64 (2000) 367-380.

*H.M. Ettouney, H.T. El-Dessouky, R.S. Faibish and P.J. Gowin, Evaluating the economics of

desalination. Chem. Eng. Progr., 12 (2002) 32-38.

*National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA Surface meteorology and solar energy:

Global data sets, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Atmospheric Science and Data

Center, 2009, http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/sse/,