Geographic areas that are rich in seawater or brackish water but lack freshwater resources require desalination technologies in order to meet water needs. Desalination processes are energy intensive, and thus there is a growing interest in coupling desalination with solar energy technologies (i.e. electrical or thermal energy sources). Three main approaches are: (1) photovoltaic-reverse osmosis (PV-RO), (2) solar-thermal desalination, and (3) solar-electrochemical^1-4. The first approach creates electrical energy to drive a pressure driven membrane desalination approach and the second approach creates heat to drive a phase change separation process. Finally, the third approach is potentially the least well studied because most electrochemical separation technologies still reside at the benchtop scale. In this poster we theoretically evaluate the energetics and technoeconomics of various solar-desalination schemes and assess the potential of electrochemical technologies for industrial separations applications.

[1] Pugsley, A., Zacharopoulos, A., Mondol, J. D., & Smyth, M. (2016). Global applicability of solar desalination. Renewable energy, 88, 200-219.

[2] Mistry, K. H., McGovern, R. K., Thiel, G. P., Summers, E. K., Zubair, S. M., & Lienhard, J. H. (2011). Entropy generation analysis of desalination technologies. Entropy, 13(10), 1829-1864.

[3] Zheng, Y., Zhao, Y., Liang, S., & Zheng, H. (2018). Thermo-Economic Optimization of an Idealized Solar Tower Power Plant Combined with MED System. Entropy, 20(11), 822.

[4] Warsinger, D., Mistry, K., Nayar, K., Chung, H., & Lienhard, V. (2015). Entropy generation of desalination powered by variable temperature waste heat. Entropy, 17(11), 7530-75