Thermo economic assessment of photovoltaic/thermal panels-powered RO desalination unit combined with preheating using geothermal energy

Abstract Recently, the reverse osmosis process is widely used in the field of desalinating brackish water and seawater to produce freshwater, but the disadvantage of using this technology is the increase in the rates of electrical energy consumption necessary to manage these units. To reduce the rates of electrical energy consumption in the RO desalination plants, geothermal energy was used as pre-heating system to heat feed water before entering RO desalination plants. The proposed system in this study consists of RO desalination plant with an energy recovery device, photovoltaic/thermal panels, and a geothermal energy extraction unit. To evaluate the system performance, three incorporated models were studied and validated by the previous experimental data. The results indicated that incorporating the geothermal energy and photovoltaic/thermal panels with the RO desalination plants has positive effects in terms of increasing productivity and reducing the rates of specific power consumption in RO desalination plants. The average saving in the specific power consumption for utilizing the thermal recovery system of PV panels and geothermal energy as preheating units reached 29.1% and 40.75% for treatment seawater and brackish water, respectively. Also, the economic feasibility showed that the saving the in the cost of freshwater produced from the RO desalination plants for incorporating both geothermal energy and photovoltaic panels with a thermal recovery system with reverse osmosis desalination plants up to 39.6%.