Using renewable energies for desalination purposes

There is no doubt that energy and fresh water are two important ingredients of socio-economic development at any region. According to very limited access to fresh water at many places around the world, today, using desalination plants to produce potable water is a common solution to supply required fresh water all around. On the other hand, all desalination plants need energy (heat or electricity) to produce fresh water, and with regard to conventional energy resources limitation it seems that the combination of renewable energies with desalination technologies will play a unique role in energy and water management in the near future. In this paper an attempt has been made to propose appropriate sustainable energy sources for each kind of desalination system (membrane or thermal). It is clear that membrane technologies, like RO desalination plants, need energy in the form of electricity while thermal technologies, such as MED and MSF systems, use heat as the energy source. Accordingly, it is important to recognize the suitable alternative energy source for each desalination system.

کلیدواژه ها:

Energy ، Renewable Energy ، Desalination