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Energy Reports 8 (2022) 112–119

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2021 8th International Conference on Power and Energy Systems Engineering (CPESE 2021),
10–12 September 2021, Fukuoka, Japan

Hybrid membrane distillation/high concentrator photovoltaic system

for freshwater production
Mohammed Rabiea,b ,∗, M.F. Elkadya,c , A.H. El-Shazlya,d
aChemical and Petrochemicals Engineering Department, Egypt–Japan University of Science and Technology, Alexandria 21934, Egypt
b Mechanical Power Engineering Department, Mansoura University, El-Mansoura 35516, Egypt
c Fabrication Technology Department, Advanced Technology and New Materials Research Institute (ATNMRI), City of Scientific Research and

Technological Applications, Alexandria, Egypt

d Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Alexandria 11432, Egypt

Received 24 October 2021; accepted 4 November 2021

Available online 26 November 2021

Abstract
Pure water shortage is a crucial issue that needs very rapid, applicable, and economical solutions. Membrane distillation is a
promising technique, primarily when supplied with a sustainable heating source. The current work introduces the hybridization
of high concentrating photovoltaic (HCPV) with membrane distillation (MD) to gain the maximum benefits from available solar
energy. The challenge regarding the HCPV unit is to incorporate an efficient cooling system that could maintain the cells within
the manufacturer’s recommended range. On the other hand, the challenge regarding the MD unit is the high energy required
for water heating. The current work introduces an effective microchannel cooling system that could maintain the cells within
the safe range and utilize this removed thermal load to be the heating source for the MD unit. The HCPV has been solved
numerically using Ansys 2020 software, while the MD unit has been investigated numerically and experimentally. It was found
that to keep the maximum cell temperature within a safe range, the coolant flow rate should be at least 370 ml/min, with
a corresponding coolant outlet temperature of 68 ºC. Moreover, the MD distillation unit has been proved experimentally to
produce approximately 46 kg/m2 per day. Electric power of about 685 W is available with the system.
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 8th International Conference on Power and Energy Systems Engineering, CPESE,
2021.

Keywords: High concentrator photovoltaic; Membrane distillation; Microchannel cooling; CFD simulation

1. Introduction
Water distillation represents a very crucial issue in recent decades because of the limited pure water resources.
Membrane distillation (MD) is one of the most promising techniques that is thermally driven. The driving force is
∗ Corresponding author at: Chemical and Petrochemicals Engineering Department, Egypt–Japan University of Science and Technology,
Alexandria 21934, Egypt.
E-mail address: mohammed.rabie@ejust.edu.eg (M. Rabie).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2021.11.067
2352-4847/© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:
//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 8th International Conference on Power and Energy Systems Engineering,
CPESE, 2021.
M. Rabie, M.F. Elkady and A.H. El-Shazly Energy Reports 8 (2022) 112–119

basically due to the vapor pressure difference on both sides of the membrane surfaces. The main challenge regarding
this technique is the required amount of thermal energy to drive the system and provide the vapor pressure difference
across the membrane surfaces. Accordingly, solar energy could be the most suitable candidate to supply such thermal
energy to drive the MD system.
Recently, a lot of research has been conducted on MD to improve its performance. A comprehensive review
of the MD technique has been introduced by [1]. Spacers have been utilized in the flow channels to enhance the
thermal performance and productivity of the system by [2]. Furthermore, the effect of operating conditions on the
system productivity has been presented by [3] and concluded that increasing both saltwater temperature and amount
positively affects the system’s productivity. The channel’s height effect on the system performance has been studied
by [4], and they concluded that decreasing this height has a positive impact on the whole system performance.
On the other hand, multi-junction solar cells are utilized with high concentrating photovoltaic (HCPV) and have
an efficiency of up to 46% [5]. The increased solar concentration increases the cell temperature dramatically, and
then an efficient cooling system should be utilized [6]. An active cooling system using a microchannel has been
introduced by [7] and has recorded a cell temperature of 69 ºC, which is below the manufacturer’s recommended
limit of 110 ºC. Furthermore, multi-channel cooling has been investigated numerically by [8], and the coolant type
and flow rate have also been studied. They have concluded that their proposed cooling system has an excellent
performance. A comprehensive review that has been conducted by [9] presented various advances in the cooling
techniques that aimed to improve the thermal performance and extend the cells lifetime. In addition, they also
introduced the hybridization of the solar system with another thermal system to maximize the benefits and improve
the overall thermal performance.
Accordingly, the proposed system is composed of two parts, the first part is HCPV, which is introduced
numerically, while the second part is membrane distillation, which is introduced experimentally. The cooling water
for HCPV part will be used as a heating source for the feed water to eliminate any external power. The novelty of
the proposed system has two major sides. The first is the designed cooling channels with proper coolant (water)
flow rates that maintain the solar cells’ temperature beyond the maximum recommended value and be used as an
appropriate heating source for the MD unit. The second point is the designed model to solve both HCPV and MD
using Ansys 2020 software. It applies the finite volume method to solve the governing equations, which provides
an excellent tool for the designers to predict the performance before the actual model setup.

2. Mathematical model
The presented study has two main parts, the first is the HCPV unit, and the second is the MD unit. The HCPV
model is available from [10], which is supplied in the current study with two different cooling microchannels
configurations to remove the thermal load and deliver it to the MD unit. The HCPV model, the two studied channels,
and the MD cell are shown in Fig. 1. The following governing equations govern both HCPV and MD units:

Fig. 1. HCPV unit with two microchannels configurations, and MD cell.

Mass conservation:
⃗ =0
∇.U (1)
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M. Rabie, M.F. Elkady and A.H. El-Shazly Energy Reports 8 (2022) 112–119

Momentum equation:
⃗ = − 1 ∇ P + υ ∇ 2U
( )
⃗
U.∇ U ⃗ (2)
ρ
Energy equation:
⃗
U.∇T = α∇ 2 T (3)
⃗ P, T, ρ, υ and α are the velocity vector, pressure, temperature, density, viscosity, and thermal diffusivity,
U,
respectively.

2.1. HCPV unit

The rate of heat flux incident to the germanium layer could be expressed as a heat generation for simulation as
follows [11,12]:
(1 − η) .I.C R.α.A
qG = (4)
V
I , C R, α, A, and V are the direct normal incidence (1000 W/m2 for this study), concentration ratio (1000 for
the current study), absorptivity, surface area, and the germanium volume, respectively. And η is the cell efficiency,
which could be calculated as follows [10]:
η = ηr e f − ψ Tcell − Tr e f
( )
(5)
ηr e f is given by the manufacturer to be 40.3% at Tr e f = 25 ºC, and ψ is given to be 0.045% [10].
The generated electrical power could be expressed as follows:
Pe = η.I.C R.α.A (6)
The thermal load to be removed by the coolant could be calculated as follows:
Q th = (1 − η) .I.C R.α.A (7)

2.2. MD unit

The permeate flux, which is defined as the delivered freshwater in one hour from 1 m2 of the membrane, could
be expressed as follows [13–15]:
J = ξ P f − Pp
( )
(8)
ξ , P f and Pp are the coefficient controlling mass transfer, vapor pressure at the saline and pure watersides,
respectively. The later parameters could be expressed as follows [16,17]:
[ ]−1
3 T.D π RT 0.5 T.D Pa RT
( )
ξ= + (9)
2 e.r 8M e PD M
( )
3841
P f, p = ex p 23.238 − (10)
T f, p − 45
D, T , e, and r are the thickness, tortuosity, porosity, and pore size of the membrane, respectively. And T f, p is
either feed or permeate temperature at the membrane surfaces to calculate the corresponding vapor pressures.

3. Numerical solution
Ansys 2020 commercial software has been utilized for the simulation. Both units have been drawn and discretized
gradually from rough mesh to fine mesh to obtain a mesh-independent solution, and the test results have been
introduced in Table 1. Then the fourth case was selected for both cases. Then the boundary conditions have been
set on the system external walls to be velocity inlet at channels’ inlet and pressure outlet of zero gage pressure
at all channels’ exit ports. A heat generation corresponding to Eq. (4) has been applied to the germanium volume
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Table 1. Mesh dependence study.

Case no. HCPV module MD module
No. of elements *103 Tcell [◦ C] % Error No. of elements *103 J [kg/m2 day] %Error
Case 1 750 77.92 1.99 100 45.46 2.4
Case 2 1000 78.36 1.45 200 45.88 1.5
Case 3 1500 78.95 0.7 300 46.21 0.79
Case 4 1750 79.43 0.10 400 46.51 0.15
Case 5 2000 79.51 – 500 46.58 –

to represent the amount of heat gained from solar radiation after concentration. Furthermore, natural convection
has been applied to all external walls to simulate the actual case. A fifth-order polynomial has been involved as a
function of temperature to obtain the water properties as indicated in [18]. Both HCPV and MD models have been
validated with numerical results in [19] and experimental results in [20], respectively, with an excellent agreement
as clear from Fig. 2(a) and (b), respectively.

Fig. 2. (a) HCPV validation with [19] (b) MD validation with [20].

The results of the MD unit have been obtained experimentally and validated numerically. The authors’ previous
work introduced the utilized membrane and experimental setup in detail [21].

4. Results
The impact of cooling water rate on the maximum cell temperature and coolant outlet temperature has been
presented in Fig. 3(a). The acceptable range of water rate to keep the cell temperature within the safe limit
(i.e., below 110 ºC) for configuration 1 and configuration 2 are 370 and 390 ml/min, respectively. The corresponding
coolant outlet temperatures are 68 and 66 ºC, respectively. On the other hand, Fig. 3(b) shows the thermal load
removed from the HCPV unit and available with the coolant to be the heating source for the MD unit. It shows
that the available thermal load range is approximately 1110–1116 W, with configuration 2 is slightly higher than
that of configuration 1.
The effects of coolant flow rate on the HCPV electric efficiency and power have been introduced in Fig. 4(a).
It shows that the flow rate has a significant impact on electric efficiency. For instance, raising the coolant rate
from 200 to 1000 ml/min has improved the efficiency from 36.5% to 38.5%, respectively, and configuration 1
is more efficient than configuration 2. This effect increases the produced power, as shown also in Fig. 4(a). The
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Fig. 3. Effect of coolant flow rate on (a) maximum cell temperature and outlet coolant temperature (b) thermal load.

Fig. 4. Effect of coolant flow rate on (a) generated electric power and electric efficiency (b) the total friction power.

improvement of electric efficiency and power can be attributed to the decline of cell temperature, and hence the
efficiency increases according to Eq. (5). On the other hand, the whole frictional power corresponding to the fluid
flow in all channels has been introduced in Fig. 4(b). It shows that configuration 2 has more frictional power than
configuration 1, and this is attributed to the narrow passages utilized in configuration 2. The required energy to
overcome this frictional power could be supplied from the electric power generated from the HCPV system, which
produces up to about 685 W, as shown in Fig. 4(a). On the other hand, Configuration 2 has better temperature
uniformity (i.e., difference between maximum and minimum cell temperatures) than that of configuration 1 which
reduce hotspots and consequently thermal stress on the cells, as shown in Fig. 5.
The coolant now represents an excellent candidate as a heating source for the MD unit, as seen from the previous
figures. The experimental work of the MD unit is introduced in this section, which presents the effect of both feed
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Fig. 5. Temperature contours and uniformity for configuration 1 and 2 at 400 ml/min.

Fig. 6. Effect of (a) hot water temperature (b) feed flow rate on permeate flux (pure water produced).

flow rate and hot water inlet temperature (coolant outlet temperature from HCPV unit) on the MD productivity.
Fig. 6(a) shows the impact of hot water temperature on the daily delivered pure water. According to the maximum
available coolant outlet temperature of 68 and 66 ºC for configuration 1 and 2, respectively, the temperature of 65
ºC has been considered, to be in safe limit, and shows a 46 kg/m2 day productivity based on 8 h/day operation. This
figure also indicates that the hot water temperature significantly affects the system productivity, with a perfect match
between numerical and experimental results. Fig. 6(b) shows the influence of feed flow rate on the MD productivity
at the average considered hot water temperature of 65 ºC. This figure shows that the flow rate positively affects the
permeate flux. The experimental work has been conducted three times with the same conditions and new membrane
to get more accurate data and uncertainty analysis. The mean of the three runs has been assigned to be the actual
value. The standard deviation of the mean is presented in Fig. 6(a) and (b) as error bars to introduce the expected
uncertainty regarding the experimental results.

5. Conclusion
The current work presents an effective combination of solar energy and membrane distillation, producing pure
water and electricity. Two cooling microchannels have been introduced to manage the thermal load of the HCPV
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unit. The results show that the minimum required cooling flow rate is 370 and 390 ml/min for configuration 1
and 2, respectively, that could maintain the safe operation of the HCPV unit. The corresponding coolant outlet
temperature was 68 and 66 ºC, respectively, and with a thermal load of about 1100–1116 W for both configurations.
The experimental results of MD unit have proved that the coolant could be used successfully for heating the saline
water to be used as a feed for the MD unit. The results show that the daily pure water production is about 46 kg/m2
at 400 ml/min feed rate and 65 ºC temperature. The hybrid system also produces power up to 685 W.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could
have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Egypt–Japan University of Science and Technology and Ministry of Higher
Education in Egypt for their continuous support. We also wish to show our appreciation to Eng. Asmaa Elrasheedy
for her intensive help. This work was supported by the Science and Technology Development Fund [Project ID:
33515].

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