The Center of Excellence for Energy (COE/E) has concluded the feasibility study on a decentralized solar-powered desalination system, according to the team’s research published on Science Direct. The system is being developed in a bid to secure water supplies for households living in remote areas and tackle the water scarcity that has left about 93% of Egypt’s rural lands untapped for agricultural potential, co-author of the USD 160k, USAID-funded study and Director of Mansoura University’s Nanotechnology Center Mohamed Elmarghany told Attaqa.

The tech: COE/E — operated by Arizona State University (ASU) in partnership with Ain Shams University, Mansoura University, and Aswan University — fabricated and tested a fully solar reliant offgrid desalination system for electricity generation and freshwater production in Egypt’s Mansoura University, incorporating photovoltaic (PV) panels, a solar thermal collector, and a membrane desalination (MD) unit in their system. The researchers assessed the tech’s performance against various feed temperatures, flow rates, and salt concentrations.

What’s the difference between MD and RO? Compared to the conventional reserve osmosis (RO) method, MD is a low-energy consuming desalination technique garnering support regionally for its potential to produce high quality potable water, along with its ability to incorporate low-grade thermal sources from renewable energy such as solar power and geothermal energy, all while having low operating pressure and temperature, according to the researchers.

How it works: The MD method extracts salt and minerals from water solutions through porous layers, which extends the life cycles of desalination plants given it is less prone to fouling — the accumulation of undesired deposits on membrane surfaces, resulting in the reduced production efficiency, higher energy consumption, and a decrease in water quality — compared to RO. MD also has a nearly 100% salt ejection rate (separation of water from the salt).

Findings: The team’s unit attained higher freshwater flux productivity rates — volume of water produced per area per unit of time — compared to conventional MD systems, reaching around 15 kg/sqm/hour at a feedinlet temperature of 65 °C and feed massflowrate of 66 kg/h for the MD cell with cylindrical obstacles.

Minimal solar needed: The COE/E team notes a small PV unit spanning an area of just 0.377 m2 would be enough to power its MD system for 15 consecutive hours, helping people residing in rural areas shore up water supplies with minimal energy generation capacity.

A step toward MD commercialization: The usage of turbulence promoters — leveraged to enhance hydraulic conditions in MD units — helped the team overcome limitations of the temperature polarization (TP) phenomenon which is infamous in MD systems for decreasing water production as a result of the removal of latent heat associated with water evaporation. The heat removal process leads to the decline of feed temperature profile in proximity to the membrane surfaces, and remains a main obstacle hindering expansion of MD utilization, the researchers explain.

Why does this matter? MENA is the most water-scarce region in the world, according to the Public Reference Bureau. While the region holds some 6.3% of the global population, it only has 1.4% of the world’s renewable freshwater sources. As global warming exacerbates desertification globally, MENA is upping its desalination projects and is looking to conserve water to withstand the effects of climate change. Seawater desalination projects currently provide more than 90% of all daily water requirements in the GCC region. The GCC region produces approximately 40% of the total desalinated water in the world, according to the MENA Desalination Market report by Ventures Onsite.

More about COE/E: Established in 2022, the five-year project received USD 22 mn funding from USAID and aims to provide current and future professionals in the energy sector with the means to meet the market’s dynamic and ever-developing expectations. Earlier this month, Enterprise sat down with the project’s director and professor at ASU, Sayfe Kiaei, and the COE/E’s technical advisor and professor at Ain Shams University, Tamer Elnady, to understand the ways in which the CEO/E plans make a sustainable mark on Egypt’s energy industry.

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