Technical DiscussionFor design purposes, a specific test site has been chosen to be used as a basis for optimization calculations and project analysis. The Middle East/Northern Africa is a very plausible market for a desalination unit as many countries in the region are in need of clean and plentiful drinking water while also being in close proximity to seawater. From this area, the team chose the Mediterranean coast of Egypt as a suitable test site location. This locale allows for adequate and easy acquisition for water and solar data. The test site used for the production calculations and environmental/economical analysis is for illustrative purposes and should not be seen as a specific site of intended use. The system being designed for the IPRO team is meant to serve
a small community that would use the fresh water equivalent of 100
people. A water consumption of 250 L/person/day can be estimated
by averaging the per capita water usage of several countries in
the region of interest. The desalination unit thus needs to be able
to produce 25,000 L/day in order to serve 100 people. This is the
equivalent of 750,000 L/30-day-month. In an effort to combat unforeseen
circumstances such as equipment failure, poor weather, etc., efficiency
has been set at 50% and thus production per day needs to be doubled
to produce 50,000 L/day during an ideal day. This should compensate
for any technical problems the desalination unit might incur and
also make up for lost production during overcast days. Due to the
amount of solar radiation in the area, the unit will have approximately
6 hours of fresh water production per day, starting after the initial
2 hours needed for the solar collector to warm up in the morning.
Our model will use January data, since this is the worst case month
in terms of incoming seawater temperature and available solar radiation.
In January, seawater enters the unit at 15°C. On average, salinity
of seawater is approximately 3.5%. |