Solar powered reverse osmosis water desalination to combat fresh water scarcity

What is it about?

Only 0.9% of water in the world is fresh water that can be used for drinking. However, population growth and climate change are a threat to our fresh water supply. To address this issue, scientists are adopting methods like desalination. This is a process that removes salt from seawater and makes it safe to drink. Distillation and reverse osmosis (RO) is a common method of desalination. There is a lot of scope to use renewable energy sources, such as solar powered photovoltaics (PV), to power distillation and RO. The author of this study looks into the benefits of a PV RO system. First, they describe the various existing desalination methods. They then look at different desalination systems that use renewable energy and discuss their pros and cons. Finally, they model a PV RO system using the software, MATLAB Simulink. The resulting system provides 1 liter of fresh water from 2 liters of seawater.

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Photo by Daniel Sinoca on Unsplash

Photo by Daniel Sinoca on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Fresh water is an important resource that is required to sustain life. But many countries have limited fresh water resources. These resources are under threat because of climate change and pollution. Seawater desalination can meet the drinking water needs of countries with limited fresh water resources. RO is one of the most commonly used desalination processes. But it is an energy intensive process. Using PV energy to power the process carries many benefits. It is a clean and sustainable solution that reduces the impact on the environment. This paper describes how a PV RO system can be successfully modeled in MATLAB Simulink. This is a commonly available and widely used software. In the future, the model presented in this study can be extended to an array of PV modules. It can also be extended to model the influx of seawater to the RO station. Economic analyses are also possible. All this will help toward realizing a practical model of the system described here. KEY TAKEAWAY: RO is a commonly used technique to obtain fresh water from seawater. Using solar energy to power RO systems can make the process clean and sustainable. The model described in this work paves the way toward realizing a practical PV RO system.