Honors Theses
Date of Award
Spring 5-1-2021
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Mechanical Engineering
First Advisor
Tejas Pandya
Second Advisor
Farhad Farzbod
Third Advisor
Wen Wu
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
About 71 % of the surface of Earth is water, out of which around 2.5 % is freshwater. The majority of the surface of Earth is occupied by seawater which also contains dissolved salt. The salt concentration in seawater makes it toxic to humans because the human body is unable to get rid of the salt that comes from seawater. The demand for fresh water is increasing due to the rise in global population. In this context, desalinated seawater is considered as a viable resource to meet the growing demand for fresh water. Desalination process is highly energy intensive due to the high salinity of the sea water. Reverse Osmosis (RO) Desalination process has emerged as the leading and the cost-effective membrane based desalination process that is currently dominating the desalination market. Though several researches are being conducted in cost reduction of desalination process, the use of renewable energy in sea water desalination is not being widely studied. This paper presents the design of an RO desalination plant that can produce 12 m3 of water in a day, and is powered by Photovoltaic system. The paper also presents the water production cost analysis from an RO plant powered by a PV system, and an RO plant powered by purchased electricity. Furthermore, the fossil fuel that can be saved over the lifetime operation of the designed RO plant with a PV system is also evaluated.
Recommended Citation
Subedi, Sandip, "Evaluation and Sizing of Solar Powered Reverse Osmosis Water Desalination System" (2021). Honors Theses. 1823.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1823
Accessibility Status
Searchable text