Renewable Energy-Driven Desalination Hybrids for Sustainability

摘要: The expansion trend of current desalination processes is expected to boost brine rejection to 240 km3 and CO2 emission to 400 million tons per year by 2050. This high brine rejection and CO2 emission rates are copping COP21 goal, maintaining temperature rise below 2°C. An innovative and energy-efficient process/material is required to achieve Paris Agreement targets. Highly efficient adsorbent cycle integration is proposed with well-proven conventional desalination processes to improve energy efficiency and to reduce environmental and marine pollution. The adsorbent cycle is operated with solar or low-grade industrial waste heat, available in abundance in water stress regions. The proposed integration with membrane processes will save 99% energy and over 150% chemical rejection to sea. In case of thermally driven cycles, the proposed hybridization will improve energy efficiency to 39% and will reduce over 80% chemical rejection. This can be one solution to achieve Paris Agreement (COP21) targets for climate control that can be implemented in near future.