| Summary: |
The United Nations predicts that two-thirds of the world's population will suffer water
shortages by 2025. Although seawater desalination is energy intensive, it is one of
the potential solutions to deal with water shortages especially where: there is lack of
alternatives (islands), redistribution is expensive (transportation costs), low-cost energy
is readily available (oil exporting countries), high living standards override the cost factor
(tourism). Using renewable energy sources for desalination will considerably contribute
to the reduction of the carbon footprint. The proposed research project aims to develop a
reliable and low-maintenance compact solar driven desalination unit using an advanced
variable geometry ejector and the corresponding control system. The proposed unit
is composed of two subsystems: solar thermal collector field and the desalination
subsystem. The developed unit will be small scale, with a daily production up to 10 m^3
of drinking water. |