Usage of Concentrating Solar Power to make Solar
Water Desalination more Efficient
Mohamme Riyaz A M
Department of Chemical Engineering
BMSCE
Bengaluru-560019, India
mohammedark07@gmail.com
Pavan P Nayak
Department of Chemical Engineering
BMSCE, Bengaluru-560019, India
pavan.nayak1997@gmail.com
Abstract−​ Being aware of the fact, that two thirds of total
Earth’s surface is covered by water and makes up 75% of human
body; It is not a hard thing to realize the importance of water.
Contrary to the past devotional attitude towards water, today
water has more than 200 chemicals, added to it are, numerous
viruses, bacteria, pollutants, etc. So, there is an alarming threat
to the mankind about the portability of water. Water scarcity
today, is one of the major crises in the world which has to be
attended. In developing countries like India, where population
rate are increasing at an alarming rate, per capita water supply is
decreasing annually. This calls for a stringent process
development such that fresh water can be developed from the
readily available, un-portable sea water. So, desalination is a vital
process which can help solving the crisis to an extent.
Desalination of water is the separation of harmful and inedible
salts and minerals from brackish or seawater to give freshwater
which is portable. Even if there are many sources of energies
available for desalination, considering the global energy crisis, we
need to be more inclined towards sustainable and inexhaustible
sources of energy such as solar energy. Solar Energy is
abundantly available in most parts of the world. There are
various methods of harnessing Solar Energy. Membrane
desalination processes and Humidification Dehumidification
processes used for desalination can be done with the help of solar
energy .This efficient hybrid technology is economically viable
and has minimal environmental impact. Considering, the recent
research being conducted in the field of solar energy harnessing,
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is an upcoming technique. It
increases intensity and multiplies the energy obtained without
changing the source of energy. This review provides a brief
introduction on CSP’s (Concentrating Solar Power) and gives a
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Samita Maitra
Professor and HoD
Department of Chemical Engineering
BMSCE
Bengaluru- 560019, India
Hod.chemical@bmsce.ac.in
Sainath Krishnamurthy
Department of Chemical Engineering
BMSCE, Bengaluru 560019, India
Sainath.che@bmsce.ac.in
fair idea on harnessing solar energy efficiently using this hybrid
technology.
I. INTRODUCTION
Many countries around the world suffer from water scarcity.
This is especially true in remote and semi-arid regions. The
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) stated that
one third of the world’s population live in countries with
insufficient freshwater to support the population. The World
Health Organization estimates that over a billion people lack
access to purified drinking water and the vast majority of these
people are living in rural areas where the low population
density and remote locations make it difficult to install
traditional clean water solutions.
Desalination of water is the only way; this freshwater
scarcity can be catered to. Water has been mankind’s greatest
support since the inception of life and now, with the
advancements in technology, new processes should be studied
on.
A number of oil-rich countries use fossil fuel to
supplement the energy for water desalination supply. In
contrast, people in many other areas of the world have neither
the financial nor oil resources to allow them to develop in a
similar manner. Large tones of oils are required to produce a
handful of fresh water; in addition to that, the use of fossil
fuels promotes the pollution of water and air. This actually
promotes the global problem in a longer scale rather than
clearing the scarcity of freshwater.
 Conventional desalination systems are operated using
fossil fuels, resulting in increase in costs because of the rise in
world energy prices, increase in environmental pollution and
the emission of greenhouse gases. Such plants are not
economically viable in remote areas where electricity
infrastructure is poor and supplies inadequate and unreliable.
The development of alternative, compact, small-scale water
desalination systems is imperative if the populations in such
areas are to gain access to fresh and safe water supplies.
Solar energy has undergone much more development
and research in comparison to other renewable sources,
therefore this paper concentrates more on solar energy as a
source for driving desalination units along with its economic
viability and potential problems. It also presents an extensive
review of the published literature on the various desalination
technologies using renewable energy and including both the
implementation challenges as well as economic and
environmental impacts.
II. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
The main objective is to try to fulfill the demand for potable
water by thoroughly reviewing the technical papers on the
usage of CSP. Also, considering economy and environmental
impact of implementing such plans in developing countries.
III. DESALINATION PROCESSES
Two main technologies are currently used in water
desalination: thermal (phase-change) processes and membrane
processes. The primary thermal distillation processes include
multistage flash distillation (MSF), multi-effect distillation
(MED), and vapor compression (VC). The VC process
encompasses two types: mechanical (MVC) and thermal
(TVC). The common membrane desalination processes
include reverse osmosis (RO) and electro dialysis (ED and
EDR). Studies have shown that in a comparison of MED MSF
and RO, MED and MSF consume more energy due to higher
energy requirement for water vaporization. Cost wise, RO is
more cost effective and economically viable in terms of water
cost due to frequent optimizations in RO technology. If an
economically viable source of energy is available, for example
a low temperature by product of an electricity power plant,
then distillation techniques may be favored. The energy cost
of thermal distillation seawater plants is close to 60% of water
production costs.
IV. SOLAR EQUIPPED TECHNOLOGY
Solar energy can be converted to thermal and electrical energy
which are required in all the conventional desalting
techniques. Using solar technology in place of conventional
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fuels will be economically viable along with cutting the risk of
pollution. Solar energy acts as a clean source of energy and is
abundantly available in the remotest of remote places in the
world. Desalination using solar technology is categorized on
the basis of energy conversion into two broad categories:
Thermal Solar Desalination and Photovoltaic.
Thermal Solar Desalination involves conversion of
solar energy into a source of heat using various equipments.
This heat is in turn used to heat the feed water in the desalting.
V. CSPS (CONCENTRATED SOLAR POWER)
This technology is based on the concept of concentrating solar
radiation to provide high temperature heat for electricity
generation. Most system use glass mirrors that track the
position of the sun. These mirrors focus Sunlight onto a
receiver that captures the Sun’s energy and converts it into
heat that can run a standard turbine generator or Engine. CSP
systems range from remote Power systems as small as a few
kilowatts Up to grid-connected power plants of 100’s of
megawatts (MW). CSP systems work best in bright, sunny
locations. Because of the economies of scale and cost of
operation and maintenance, CSP technology works best in
large power plants. CSPs are generally preferred because, they
are clean, reliable power from domestic renewable energy,
operate at high annual efficiencies, firm power delivery when
integrated with thermal storage, easily integrated into the
power grid, and boosts national economy by creating many
new solar companies and jobs.
Primary aim of CSP plants is to generate electricity.
The advantage of CSP plants is that they can be equipped with
a heat storage system in order to generate electricity even
when the sky is cloudy or after sunset. This significantly
increases the CSP capacity compared to solar photovoltaics
and more importantly, enables the production of dispatchable
electricity, which can facilitate both grid integration and
economic competitiveness.
CSP plants can be broken down into two groups,
based on whether the solar collectors concentrate the sun rays
along a focal line or on a single focal point (with much higher
concentration factors). Line-focusing systems include
parabolic trough and linear Fresnel plants and have single-axis
tracking systems. Point-focusing systems include solar dish
systems and solar tower plants and include two-axis tracking
systems to concentrate the power of the sun.
All these various configurations provide a suitable
source of energy to run desalination processes. Due to lack of
awareness and lack of research on this subject, these
techniques have not been implemented widely. Some isolated
studies have been carried out and their implementation has
yielded a solid technique for water desalting which is
economically viable and energy efficient too. The parabolic
trough system is currently the best candidate for
CSP/desalination coupling, and two types of desalination
processes, MED and RO, are currently the best candidates for
CSP coupling.
VI. ​PARABOLIC TROUGH COLLECTORS
The parabolic trough collectors (PTC) consist of solar
collectors (mirrors), heat receivers and support structures. The
parabolic-shaped mirrors are constructed by forming a sheet of
reflective material into a parabolic shape that concentrates
incoming sunlight onto a central receiver tube at the focal line
of the collector. The arrays of mirrors can be 100 metres (m)
long or more, with the curved aperture of 5 m to 6 m. A
single-axis tracking mechanism is used to orient both solar
collectors and heat receivers toward the sun. PTC are usually
aligned North-South and track the sun as it moves from East to
West to maximize the collection of energy.
The receiver comprises the absorber tube (usually
metal) inside an evacuated glass envelope. The absorber tube
is generally a coated stainless steel tube, with a spectrally
selective coating that absorbs the solar (short wave) irradiation
well, but emits very little infrared (long wave) radiation. This
helps to reduce heat loss. Evacuated glass tubes are used
because they help to reduce heat losses. A heat transfer fluid
(HTF) is circulated through the absorber tubes to collect the
solar energy and transfer it to the steam generator or to the
heat storage system.
Parabolic troughs could be a suitable energy supply
for most desalination methods, but in practice, have mainly
been used for thermal distillation as these methods can take
advantage of both the heat and electricity troughs produce.
Other methods of desalination would receive little or no
benefit from the heat produced. The unit cost of these solar
thermal energy production methods directly increases with the
temperatures they can yield. This technique is slightly
expensive and is used in places where land prices are high and
very high temperatures or electricity are required. The
parabolic trough system is used widely with desalination
techniques to produce new hybrid technology which is highly
optimized. Efforts are being made to make the process more
suitable to the economy.
CSP/MED, A typical parabolic trough configuration
can be combined with a MED system where steam generated
by the trough (superheated to around 380 C) is first expended
in a turbine and then used in a conventional manner for
desalination. The typical steam temperature for the MED plant
is around 70 C; therefore, there is sufficient energy in the
steam to produce electricity before it is used in the MED plant.
Recent studies have been conducted with the objective of
having a less costly and energy efficient sea water desalination
process using MED with zero brine discharge. This is a mature
technology but it cannot currently compete with other
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conventional desalting techniques without further
advancements.
CSP/RO The heat generated by the CSP plant can be
used to produce the electric power needed to drive the RO
pumps. Based on studies, engineers have concluded that
CSP/RO coupling is more efficient and requires less energy
than CSP/MED coupling.
VII. LINEAR FRESNEL COLLECTORS (LFCS)
LFCs
are
similar
to
parabolic trough collectors, but use a series of long flat, or
slightly curved, mirrors placed at different angles to
concentrate the sunlight on either side of a fixed receiver
(located several metres above the primary mirror field). Each
line of mirrors is equipped with a single-axis tracking system
and is optimized individually to ensure that sunlight is always
concentrated on the fixed receiver. The receiver consists of a
long, selectively-coated absorber tube. Unlike parabolic
trough collectors, the focal line of Fresnel collectors is
distorted by astigmatism. This requires a mirror above the tube
(a secondary reflector) to refocus the rays missing the tube, or
several parallel tubes forming a multi-tube receiver that is
wide enough to capture most of the focused sunlight without a
secondary reflector.
The main advantages of linear Fresnel CSP systems
compared to parabolic trough systems are that LFCs can use
cheaper flat glass mirrors, which are a standard mass-produced
commodity, LFCs require less steel and concrete, as the metal
support structure is lighter. This also makes the assembly
process easier; the wind loads on LFCs are smaller, resulting
in better structural stability, reduced optical losses and less
mirror-glass breakage, the mirror surface per receiver is higher
in LFCs than in PTCs, which is important, given that the
receiver is the most expensive component in both PTC and in
LFCs.
These advantages need to be balanced against the fact
that the optical efficiency of LFC solar fields (referring to
direct solar irradiation on the cumulated mirror aperture) is
lower than that of PTC solar fields due to the geometric
properties of LFCs. Cosine losses are high compared to PTC.
Despite these drawbacks, the relative simplicity of the LFC
system means that it may be cheaper to manufacture and
install than PTC CSP plants.
However, it remains to be seen if costs per kWh are
lower. Additionally, given that LFCs are generally proposed to
use direct steam generation, adding thermal energy storage is
likely to be more expensive.
VIII. FRESNEL LENS FOR SALINE WATER HEATING
Fresnel lens is a flat optical solar concentrator which can be
used in HDH systems to concentrate solar energy and use it to
heat saline water. Heating of saline water eventually
evaporates the water leading to the separation of unnecessary
salt and mineral particles.
The FL consists of acrylic sheet with concentric grooves. The
lens is fixed facing the appropriate direction depending on the
season and the location of the site. The solar tracking is done
manually. The saline water passes through pipe. The water
storage tank is made from steel and sealed by glass wool in
order to reduce the heat loss; also it is supplied with electrical
heater to adjust the temperature of hot saline water to the
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desired feed temperature. Water passes with a different flow
rates once through the heating pipe where it is heated by the
focused solar energy. Once the water temperature reaches the
desired level, the water is directed to the humidification unit.
The
humidification-dehumidification unit consists of galvanized
steel cuboids lined with plastic sheet. The air is inserted to the
unit by a fan mounted on one face of the tank.
This is an
environmentally friendly and cost effective method of
harnessing soar energy for water desalination. Methods like
these require in depth studies which would open doors to vivid
balance between environment and economy. Although tests
have shown that theoretical yield was not accomplished due to
energy losses, mathematical modeling of water evaporation
showed that it is possible to enhance the process. Multistage
humidification systems can be setup if Fresnel lens is used.
Other CSP technologies include solar tower and solar
dish technology. These technologies can also be used for
water desalination, although they are yet to be studied in that
light. Some attributes of these processes are,
IX. SOLAR TOWER
It uses a ground-based field of mirrors to focus direct solar
irradiation onto a receiver mounted high on a central tower
where the light is captured and converted into heat. These can
achieve higher temperatures than parabolic trough and linear
Fresnel systems; because more sunlight can be concentrated [3] S. Mahmoud, W. Mark, R. Saffa, “Opportunities
on a single receiver and the heat losses at that point can be for solar water desalination worldwide : Review”,
minimized. Solar towers have a number of potential Sustainable Cities and Society, v​ ol.9, pp 67-80 ,2013 .
advantages which mean that they could soon become the
preferred CSP technology. The main advantages are that the [4] E.A. Grubert, A.S. Stillwell, M.E. Weber, “Where
higher temperatures can potentially allow greater efficiency of does solar-aided seawater desalination make sense? A
the steam cycle and reduce water consumption for cooling the method for identifying sustainable sites”,
condenser; the higher temperature also makes the use of
Desalination​, vol. ​339​, pp 10-17, 2014.
thermal energy storage more attractive in order to achieve
schedulable power generation; and higher temperatures will [5] “RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES:
also allow greater temperature differentials in the storage COST ANALYSIS SERIES (Irena)”,vol. 1, issue
system, reducing costs or allowing greater storage for the
4/5,2012.
same cost.
Keeping in mind these advantages, if the cost factor and
the economy is improved then this technology is likely to gain
market share in the near future.
X. STIRLING DISH TECHNOLOGY
The Stirling dish system consists of a parabolic dish shaped
concentrator (like a satellite dish) that reflects direct solar
irradiation onto a receiver at the focal point of the dish. The
receiver may be a Stirling engine (dish/ engine systems) or a
micro-turbine. Stirling dish systems require the sun to be
tracked in two axes, but the high energy concentration onto a
single point can yield very high temperatures. Stirling dish
systems are yet to be deployed at any scale. Most research is
currently focused on using a Stirling engine in combination
with a generator unit, located at the focal point of the dish, to
transform the thermal power to electricity.

REFERENCES:
[1] Dr. T Franz, S.M. Hans, “Concentrating solar
power for seawater desalination in the Middle East
and North Africa”, ​Desalination,​ vol.220, pp 163-185,
2008.
[2] Z.M. Omara , Mohamed A. Eltawil , ElSayed
A.ElNashar , “A new hybrid desalination system
using wicks/solar still and evacuated solar water
heater”, ​Desalination​, vol.325, pp 56-64 , 2013.

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