Techno-economic analysis of stand-alone solar desalination at variable load conditions

Abstract

The operation of large-scale reverse osmosis units in combination with different solar power plants, both, Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and Photovoltaics (PV) has been evaluated under variable load conditions. In the case of the Reverse Osmosis (RO) unit, configurations with and without an energy recovery device have been considered. In the case of the CSP plant, a thermal storage system with several capacities (8-14 h) covers the periods with low solar radiation and no storage has been taken into account for the PV plant due to the prohibitively high cost of batteries at large scale. The analysis has been done for a specific location in Algeria, considering different scenarios to adapt the operation of the RO unit at partial load in order to assure a stable operation. The dynamic performance of the RO unit is presented for each scenario, together with an economic analysis