Renewable Energy in Water Desalination: Model Based Approach

A special issue of Processes (ISSN 2227-9717). This special issue belongs to the section "Biological Processes and Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2016) | Viewed by 4772

Special Issue Editor

Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering & Informatics, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK
Interests: dynamic modelling; simulation; optimisation and control of batch and continuous chemical processes with specific interests in distillation; industrial reactors; refinery processes; desalination; wastewater treatment
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Coupling renewable energy sources (RES), such as solar, wind, and geothermal energy, with traditional fossil-fuel-based energy systems in water desalination can lead to energy efficient processes with significantly reduced environmental impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint. Solar technologies produce a large amount of heat, which typically suits thermal desalination. Wind-energy-based electricity, on the other hand, is often combined with membrane desalination. Currently, around 1% of the total desalinated water is based on energy from RES. Interestingly, the countries suffering from shortage of drinking water sources have significant amounts of RES. The limited use of renewable energy can be attributed to more than one problem, such as a lack of information, education, training and research. Moreover, the use of expensive energy storage systems, due to the stochastic nature of RES, usually limits the exploitation of RES. Various methods (experimental to simple calculations) to evaluate the economic viability of coupling renewable energy sources with desalination plants have been published; however, serious model-based techniques have not yet been considered in this area. The development of hybrid desalination/renewable energy model is very complex because of uncertain renewable energy supplies, load demands, and large numbers of parameters. However, the need for such a model is crucial to provide extensive analysis for combining desalination systems with renewable energy sources.

This Special Issue, therefore, seeks to collect recent research efforts where model-based techniques have been utilised in exploring the full potential of the use of renewable energy in water desalination.

Prof. Dr. Iqbal M. Mujtaba
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • Water desalination
  • Thermal desalination
  • Membrane desalination
  • Renewable Energy
  • Process Model
  • Operation, design and economic optimisation

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

10 pages, 1696 KiB  
Article
Ambient Pressure-Dried Graphene–Composite Carbon Aerogel for Capacitive Deionization
by Chen Zhang, Xiaodong Wang, Hongqiang Wang, Xueling Wu and Jun Shen
Processes 2019, 7(1), 29; https://doi.org/10.3390/pr7010029 - 08 Jan 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 4130
Abstract
Capacitive deionization (CDI) technology possessing excellent desalination performance and energy efficiency is currently being widely studied in seawater desalination. In this work, the graphene–composite carbon aerogels (GCCAs) easily prepared by an ambient pressure drying method served as electrodes to remove salt ions in [...] Read more.
Capacitive deionization (CDI) technology possessing excellent desalination performance and energy efficiency is currently being widely studied in seawater desalination. In this work, the graphene–composite carbon aerogels (GCCAs) easily prepared by an ambient pressure drying method served as electrodes to remove salt ions in aqueous solution by CDI. The microstructure of the obtained GCCAs was found to depend on the component content in the precursor solution, and could be controlled through varying the mass ratio of resorcinol and formaldehyde to graphene oxide (RF/GO). The surface characteristics and microstructure of GCCAs were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In addition, the electrochemical tests and CDI experiments of GCCA electrodes were conducted in NaCl solution. Thanks to the reasonable pore structure and highly conductive network, GCCA-150 achieved the best salt adsorption capacity of 26.9 mg/g and 18.9 mg/g in NaCl solutions with concentrations of 500 mg/L and 250 mg/L, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renewable Energy in Water Desalination: Model Based Approach)
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