How to Use Wind Power Efficiently for Seawater Reverse Osmosis Desalination ()
ABSTRACT
Due to water scarcity and the global trends in
climate change, winning drinking water through
desalination is increasingly becoming an option, especially using reverse
osmosis (RO) membrane technology. Operating a reverse osmosis desalination
plant is associated with several expenses and energy consumption that take a very large share. Several studies have shown that wind power
incurs lower energy costs compared to other renewable energy sources, therefore,
should be the first choice to be coupled to an RO desalination system to clean
water using sustainable energy. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the feasibility of driving an RO
desalination system using wind power with and without pressure vessel energy
storage and small scale energy recovery using Clark pump based on simulation models.
The performance of both variants was compared with several scenarios of wind patterns. As expected
buffering and energy recovery delivered higher water production and better water quality demonstrating the importance of an energy
storage/recovery system for a wind-power-supplied desalination plant.
Share and Cite:
Karimanzira, D. (2020) How to Use Wind Power Efficiently for Seawater Reverse Osmosis Desalination.
Energy and Power Engineering,
12, 499-520. doi:
10.4236/epe.2020.129031.