14th international conference on Sciences and Techniques of Automatic control STA'2013-PID3265-REC

& computer engineering - STA'2013, Sousse, Tunisia, December 20-22, 2013

Modeling and control of a desalination unit based solar energy

Mariem SMAOUI and Lotfi KRICHEN

II. DESALINATION SYSTEM DESCRIPTION



Abstract— The power of desalination system by renewable

energy sources (RES) systems has been going through an
The studied system is a photovoltaic system powering the
upwards trend, especially during the last decade. This paper
concerns the modeling and the control of a desalination unit by
desalination unit as shown in Fig. 1. This system consists of a
reverse osmosis based solar energy. The system includes photovoltaic generator that operates at its maximum power
photovoltaic panels, electrical converters, batteries and a through a boost converter equipped with a tracker (MPPT).
desalination unit which presents the load. Dynamic modeling of The transfer of the generated power in the borders of
various components of this isolated system is presented. To continuous bus towards the load is performed using an
ensure the balance between consumption and production and to inverter. To make the balance between consumption and
guarantee the proper operating of the unit, control loops are production, and to ensure the operating of the installation, a
developed. The simulation results show that the proposed battery bank with a current reversible chopper is used.
hybrid power system equipped with control loops operates
efficiently under load power demand variations.
Keywords— Desalination, Reverse Osmosis, Solar energy.
Modeling, Control.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the last few years, the growing demand for fresh water
is partially satisfied by desalination plants powered by
renewable energy sources, for example wind and solar
energy, especially for small communities in remote areas and
isolated islands that have access to sea- or brackish water [1-
3]. Reverse Osmosis (RO) is known as the most suitable
desalination process to be coupled with different renewable
energy sources due to the low cost and energy efficiency of
the process [4,5]. In the last few decades, several desalination Figure 1. General diagram of a photovoltaic system.
units installed worldwide as Sadous Riyadh (Saudi Arabia),
Elhamrawie (Egypt), Heelat ar Rakah (Oman) and Solarflow III. DESCRIPTION AND MODELING OF THE PHOTOVOLTAIC
(Australia) use the photovoltaic energy as a renewable source INSTALLATION ELEMENTS
with battery storage [6]. Due to the stochastic and intermittent
nature of solar energy and the difficulty in predicting the A. Photovoltaic generator
energy production rate, the renewable stand-alone installation The photovoltaic panels are constituted of cells in series
need to control systems which allows to make the balance and/or parallel encapsulated under glass. The electric
between production and consumption and ensure the proper behavior of a photovoltaic cell can be described by the
operating of the system during unfavorable weather electrical circuit of Fig. 2.
conditions.
This work focuses on the modeling of the desalination
plant which consists primarily by photovoltaic panels,
electrical converters, storage system and the load. Regulation
and control systems are developed to ensure the proper
operating of the installation, these systems allow to maximize
the extracted power from the photovoltaic generator and to
regulate the DC bus voltage and the amplitude and the
frequency of the load voltage. Simulation results show that
the used regulation and control loops are efficient and well
developed. Figure 2. Equivalent circuit for a PV cell with a single diode.

Lotfi KRICHEN and Mariem SMAOUI, University of Sfax National

School of Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering BP 1173, 3038
Sfax, Tunisia, lotfi.krichen@enis.rnu.tn, smaoui_mariam@yahoo.fr.

978-1-4799-2954-2/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 370

14th international conference on Sciences and Techniques of Automatic control
& computer engineering - STA'2013, Sousse, Tunisia, December 20-22, 2013

Based on this electric circuit, the mathematical model of a C. Continuous bus

PV cell can be defined in accordance with the following The DC bus which is modeled by a capacitor " " acts
expression that permits to retrieve the I–V curve: [7,8]. as an interface between different sources as presented in
Ic  I ph  I d  I sh Fig.4.
(1)
where is the photo current and it depends on the solar
irradiance, is the current through anti-parallel diode, is
the shunt current due to shunt resistor branch and is the
diode saturation current. These currents are given by the
following relationships:

  
I ph  P1.EG . 1  P2 . EG  Eref  P3 . T j  Tref 
   (2)
Figure 4. Electric diagram of DC bus.
 N  20 
T j  Ta  EG .  oct  (3) The DC bus voltage which is depends on the currents of
 800  the inverter, the battery and the PV generator is given by:
    N cp     1 1


 q.  Vc  Rs _ p . 
 
 .I c   
 N cs    
Vbus 
Cbus 
. I cbus dt 
Cbus 
. ( I mpv  I cb  I m _ inv )dt (10)
I d  I s . exp    1 (4)
  A.K .T j  
    D. Three-phase inverter
   
Power converters are inherently discrete systems, while
  Eg  the photovoltaic generators and the load are continuous
I s  P4 .T j3 .   (5) systems. For the dynamic behavior analysis of a complete
 K .T j 
  system, it is necessary to develop an equivalent continuous
 Ncp   Ncp  model of the power converter. Therefore the Park
I sh  (Vc  Rs _ p .   .I c ) / ( Rsh _ p .  ) (6) transformation is used and there are the following equations
 Ncs   Ncs  [10]:

B. Boost converter and PV filter Vbus

Vmd  U dw . (11)
The Boost converter which maximizes the power 2
extracted from the PV generator is represented by fig. 3 [9]. Vbus
Vmq  U qw . (12)
2
1
I m _ inv 
2

U dw Itd  U qw Itq  (13)

With Vmd and Vmq are the simple voltages modulated by

Figure 3. Equivalent electric diagram of a boost converter with a PV filter.
With reference to Fig. 3, the input current I L , the input
and the output voltages of the boost converter are modeled by
the following equations:
the converter on the load side and Udw and Uqw are the
converter setting voltages.
E. Three-phase load
The photovoltaic system supplies three-phase loads.
Depending on the available power to the load, we can
determine the direct and quadrature components of the
absorbed current by the load.

1 V pd Plo  V pq Qlo
IL 
Lpv 
. V pv  VI _ Boost  Rpv .I L dt  (7) Ilo.d  2
V pd 2
 V pq
(14)

VI _ Boost V pq Plo  V pd Qlo

VO _ Boost  Vbus  (8) Ilo.q 
1    2
V pd 2
 V pq
(15)

IO _ Bost  I mpv  1    .I L (9) F. Battery

The battery is modeled using a simplified electric diagram
which is depicted in Fig. 5 [11].

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14th international conference on Sciences and Techniques of Automatic control
& computer engineering - STA'2013, Sousse, Tunisia, December 20-22, 2013

Figure 5. Equivalent electric diagram of a battery.

The battery voltage is given by:

Vbat  e0  Rbat Ibat (16)

To have the balance between production and Figure 7. DC bus control and regulation structure.
consumption, the DC bus voltage must be always kept
constant. The DC bus voltage regulation is implemented by a C. Inverter control
current reversible chopper connected to a battery bank. When
To have a stand-alone production system, the power
the generated energy by the solar panels is insufficient, the
converter control is necessary which aims to control the
DC bus voltage becomes less than the reference value. In this
amplitude and frequency of the delivered voltage to the load.
case the missing energy is obtained from batteries. When
there is an excess of energy, it is used to recharge the The reference values of the delivered current and voltage
batteries. to the load should be determined. These references are given
by the following expressions:
IV. CONTROL DEVICE OF THE PHOTOVOLTAIC INSTALLATION
ELEMENTS   2   4  
 cos cos     cos      Va 
A. Maximization of the photovoltaic generator power V
 pd _ ref   3   3   
  Vb 
To ensure the operation of a photovoltaic generator at its V pq _ ref    sin sin    2  sin    4   V  (17)
     c
maximum power point (MPP), an MPPT controller is often
  3   3   
used. The used controller algorithm is "Perturbation and
Observation" [12]. After the determination of the reference
PV voltage "Vpv_ref", a regulation loop is necessary to ensure V pd _ ref Plo _ ref  V pq _ ref Qlo _ ref
the operating of the PV generator at its optimum voltage. This Ilo.d _ ref  (18)
2 2
loop is shown in Fig. 6. V pd _ ref  V pq _ ref

V pq _ ref Plo _ ref  Vpd _ ref Qlo _ ref

Ilo.q _ ref  2 2 (19)
V pd _ ref  V pq _ ref

The control loop is shown in Fig. 8.

Figure 6. Bus PV control structure.

B. DC bus voltage regulation

The DC bus voltage regulation acts directly on the current
"Icb". The control loup of DC bus is reported in Fig. 7.

Figure 8. Control loop of the power converter.

V. SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This section is devoted to the presentation of the obtained
simulation results. The applied illumination profile is
represented in Fig. 9. The active and the reactive powers
demand by the loads are depicted in Fig. 10.

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14th international conference on Sciences and Techniques of Automatic control
& computer engineering - STA'2013, Sousse, Tunisia, December 20-22, 2013

1000 Fig. 11 shows that for each applied illumination value, the
Solar irradiation (W/m2)

PV generator delivers a maximum power which corresponds

to an optimal current and voltage.
500 401

DC bus voltage (V)

400.5

0 400
0 5 10 15 20
Tim e (h) 399.5
Figure 9. Applied illumination profile.
399
0 5 10 15 20
Active and reactive power (W)

Time (h)
4000
Pch Figure 12. DC bus voltage
3000 Qch
Fig. 12 shows that in the steady state, the DC-bus voltage
2000 is well regulated. It is almost always constant, thanks to the
fast dynamic regime of the developed controller, except that
1000
there are small perturbations that appear whenever the load
0 5 10 15 20 profile changes.
Time (h)
Fig. 13 shows the simple reference and the regulated
Figure 10. Active and reactive required powers by the load. simple voltages.
Direct reference voltage (V)

222

Direct regulated voltage (V)

10000 222
Panel output power (W)

8000 221 221

6000 220 220

4000 219 219

2000 218 218

0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20
Time (h) Time (h)
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
0.2
Quadrature ref voltage(V)

Quadrature reg voltage(V)

Time (h) 10

(a) Delivered power by the PV generator 0.1 5

300 0 0
Panel output voltage (V)

-0.1 -5
200
-0.2 -10
0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20
Time (h) Time (h)
100
(a) (b)
Figure 13. Direct and quadrature load voltages (a) reference (b) regulated.
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Time (h) Fig. 13 shows that the voltages follow their references,
except that there are small negligible perturbations. To better
(b) Generated voltage by the PVG
check the voltages stability, Fig. 14 and 15 show the reference
30 and the regulated voltages.
Panel output current (A)

20
200
Reference Voltage (V)

10 100

0
0
0 5 10 15 20 -100
Time (h)
-200
0 0.01 0.02 0.03
(c) Delivered current by the PVG Time (h)
Figure 11. Power, voltage and current generated by the PV generator. Figure 14. Reference simple voltages.

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14th international conference on Sciences and Techniques of Automatic control
& computer engineering - STA'2013, Sousse, Tunisia, December 20-22, 2013

200 REFERENCES
Regulated voltage(V)

100 [1] Qingfen Ma, Hui Lu, " Wind energy technologies integrated with
desalination systems:Review and state-of-the-art", Desalination 277
0 (2011) 274–280.
[2] Arun Subramani, Mohammad Badruzzaman, Joan Oppenheimer,
-100 Joseph G. Jacangelo, "Energy minimization strategies and renewable
energy utilization for desalination: A review", water research 45 ( 2011
-200
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 ) 1907-1920.
Time (h) [3] Veera Gnaneswar Gude a, Nagamany Nirmalakhandan b, Shuguang
Deng a," Renewable and sustainable approaches for desalination",
Figure 15. Regulated simple voltages. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 14 (2010) 2641–2654.
[4] A.M.K. El-Ghonemy, "A small-scale brackish water reverse-osmosis
desalination system used in northern Saudi Arabia: A case study",
It can be seen that these voltages are almost identical. Fig Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 16 (2012) 4597–4605.
16 depicts the voltage and current of the load first phase. At [5] C. Fritzmann, J. Löwenberg, T. Wintgens, T. Melin, "State-of-the-art
time "t = 0 h", a resistive load is applied, this curve shows the of reverse osmosis desalination", Desalination 216 (2007) 1–76.
voltage and the current are in phase. At time "t = 2.65 h," an [6] Ali Al-Karaghouli, David Renne, Lawrence L. Kazmerski, "Solar and
inductive load is inserted, it can be observed that there is a wind opportunities for water desalination in the Arab regions",
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 13 (2009) 2397–2407.
phase shift between voltage and current. [7] Hongmei Tian a,b, Fernando Mancilla-David a, Kevin Ellis d, Eduard
Muljadi c,Peter Jenkins d, "A cell-to-module-to-array detailed model
200 for photovoltaic panels", Solar Energy 86 (2012) 2695–2706.
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[8] Valerio Lo Brano, Giuseppina Ciulla, "An efficient analytical approach

100 for obtaining a five parameters model of photovoltaic modules using
only reference data", Applied Energy 111 (2013) 894–903.
[9] Toni Bjaziˇ c´ a,∗, Zeljko ˇ Bana, Miro Milanovicˇ b, " Modeling of
0 current mode controlled boost converter supplied by fuel cell suitable
for controller design purposes", Journal of Power Sources 198 (2012)
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[10] Salma El Aimani, "Modélisation de différentes technologies
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0 5 10 15 20 Doctorat. Ecole centrale de Lille : 2004.
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Photovoltaïque Autonome", Mémoire de Magister 2008, Centre
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200 [12] Mohamed A.Eltawil, ZhengmingZhao, "MPPT techniques for
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100 Reviews 25 (2013)793–813

0 NOMENCLATURE
-100
Ideality factor (1 < A <3).
PV bus capacitor F
-200
DC bus capacitor F
2.6 2.62 2.64 2.66 2.68 2.7 Open circuit voltage of the battery
Time (h) Bandgap energy at reference temperature (1.121 for
Figure 16. Voltage and current of the load first phase. silicon)
Solar irradiation W/m2
Solar irradiance at STC (1000 W/m2) W/m2
VI. CONCLUSION
Battery current (Battery side)
This paper presents the modeling and the control of a Generated current by the cell
desalination system consisting of photovoltaic panels, Battery current (DC bus side)
electrical converters and batteries. Regulation and control Current through anti-parallel diode
Direct and quadrature absorbed currents by the
loops are designed for the energy production system to load.
guarantee the proper operating of the unit. It can be concluded Input current of the boost converter
from the simulation results that the proposed hybrid power Input modulated current of the inverter
generation system feeding stand-alone desalination unit can Output current of the boost converter
operate efficiently despite the variations of the load power
demand and the solar radiation. The presented results confirm Photo current (it varies linearly with solar
the validity of the control loops; the DC bus is well regulated, irradiance for a certain cell temperature).
the PV maximum power is ensured and the generated voltage Generated current by the PV panel
of the three-phase load is constant in amplitude and Diode saturation current
frequency. In conclusion, the proposed regulation and control Shunt current due to shunt resistor branch
Direct and quadrature line currents
loops are well suited for this desalination system.
Boltzmann’s constant (k = 1.3806503*10 -23 J/K) J/K
Nominal operating temperature of the solar cell that °C
is given by the manufacturer (45°C).
Active and reactive powers of the load W
VAR

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14th international conference on Sciences and Techniques of Automatic control
& computer engineering - STA'2013, Sousse, Tunisia, December 20-22, 2013

Constants cell material nature and experimentally

determined by the manufacturer
Electron charge (1,6.10-19 C) C
Internal resistance of the battery Ω
Series resistance of a solar panel. Ω
Shunt resistance of a solar panel Ω
STC Standard Reference Condition
et =25°C)
Ambient temperature K
Cell temperature K
Cell temperature at STC (25°C–298.15 K) K
Converter setting voltages.

Battery voltage
DC bus voltage
Generated voltage by the PV cell
Input voltage of boost converter
Simple modulated voltages by the converter on the
load side
Output voltage of boost converter
Direct and quadrature components of the voltages
at the terminals of the load.
Generated voltage by the PV panel
Duty cycle

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