Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
M
ULTIPLE
E
FFECT
D
ISTILLATION OF
S
EAWATER
W
ATER
U
SING
S
OLAR
E
NERGY
-
T
HE
C
ASE
OF
A
BU
D
HABI
S
OLAR
D
ESALINATION
P
LANT
Ali El-Nashar
Zizinia, Alexandria, Egypt
Abstract
This report describes the solar desalination test plant in Abu Dhabi, UAE and gives a
summary of its first year performance and economics. The plant has been operating
successfully for 18 years supplying fresh water to the City of Abu Dhabi. The plant was
commissioned in September 1984 and was running until the year 2002 when it was dismantled
after fulfilling its objectives. The aim of the plant is to investigate the technical and economic
feasibility of using solar desalination of seawater in providing fresh water to remote
communities in the Middle East and to obtain long-term performance and reliability data on
the operation of the plant. The plant has proved its technical feasibility and proved to be
reliable in operation with few minor maintenance problems that required slight plant
modification. Maintenance routines were established to maintain high plant performance. The
economic feasibility of the plant was established by comparing the cost of water from a solar
MED plant with a conventional MED plant using fossil fuel for plant capacity ranging from
100 m
3
/day to 1000 m
3
/day. It was found that the cost of water from solar MED plants is
competitive with that from a conventional MED plant if the cost fuel continues to rise.
Keywords:
desalination, solar energy, solar desalination, economic feasibility, operating
performance, solar distillation.
1. Introduction
Many remote areas of the world such as coastal desert areas in the Middle East or some
Mediterranean and Caribbean islands are suffering from acute shortage of drinking water
particularly during the summer season. Drinking water for these locations are normally
hauled in by tankers or barges or produced by small desalination units using the available
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