Thermal Driven Desalination with Zero Waste Discharge: A Prototype Development

• Main Author: Arora, Ishan
• Other Authors: Li, Peiwen
• Language: en_US
• Published: The University of Arizona. 2017
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/625281; http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/625281

This Research is devoted in modifying the technology of desalination such as the multi-stage flash and the multi effect distillation. The main motive behind this research is to make these mentioned technologies use least electrical energy so that they can be integrated with renewable sources such as solar, wind etc. Secondly, use the waste discharge brine to collect salts so that we can use those salts as thermal energy storage medium. The highlight of this study is the use of wasteful discharge to make desalination zero discharge. The thesis is therefore titled as Thermal Driven Desalination with zero discharge. As the title of this thesis suggests, this work is a combination of 3 stages of research. The first stage is the development of a program for the calculation of various mass flow rates and other parameters. The program developed mainly uses the first law of thermodynamics namely mass and energy balance. The program allows us to predict these flow rates and other parameters to design our system. The second stage of this study is the 3-D modelling and design of various assemblies like the Full separation tank, effects, heating strategy, control strategy and heat exchanger required in the system. We therefore compared the area obtained from the program and that used in the prototype and observed the changes and differences. Thirdly, this system is implemented by fabrication of a prototype. The prototype is developed to showcase the validity of the concept. The prototype would validate the simulation values as well as allow us to justify our concept behind this system. The prototype although gave a few problems during various experiment runs and hence requires more work.