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Commercial Thermal Technologies for Desalination of Water from Renewable Energies: a State of the Art Review

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Commercial Thermal Technologies for Desalination of Water from Renewable Energies: a State of the Art Review processes Review Commercial Thermal Technologies for Desalination of Water from Renewable Energies: A State of the Art Review Jhon Jairo Feria-Díaz 1,2,* , María Cristina López-Méndez 1 , Juan Pablo Rodríguez-Miranda 3, Luis Carlos Sandoval-Herazo 1 and Felipe Correa-Mahecha 4 1 División de Estudios Posgrado e Investigación, Tecnológico Nacional de México/Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Misantla, Misantla 93821, Mexico; [email protected] (M.C.L.-M.); [email protected] (L.C.S.-H.) 2 Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de Sucre, Sincelejo 700001, Colombia 3 Facultad del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Bogotá 11021-110231588, Colombia; [email protected] 4 Facultad de Ingeniería, Fundación Universidad de América, Bogotá 111321, Colombia; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: Thermal desalination is yet a reliable technology in the treatment of brackish water and seawater; however, its demanding high energy requirements have lagged it compared to other non- thermal technologies such as reverse osmosis. This review provides an outline of the development and trends of the three most commercially used thermal or phase change technologies worldwide: Multi Effect Distillation (MED), Multi Stage Flash (MSF), and Vapor Compression Distillation (VCD). First, state of water stress suffered by regions with little fresh water availability and existing desalination technologies that could become an alternative solution are shown. The most recent studies published Citation: Feria-Díaz, J.J.; for each commercial thermal technology are presented, focusing on optimizing the desalination López-Méndez, M.C.; process, improving efficiencies, and reducing energy demands. Then, an overview of the use Rodríguez-Miranda, J.P.; of renewable energy and its potential for integration into both commercial and non-commercial Sandoval-Herazo, L.C.; desalination systems is shown. Finally, research trends and their orientation towards hybridization Correa-Mahecha, F. Commercial of technologies and use of renewable energies as a relevant alternative to the current problems of Thermal Technologies for brackish water desalination are discussed. This reflective and updated review will help researchers Desalination of Water from Renewable Energies: A State of the to have a detailed state of the art of the subject and to have a starting point for their research, since Art Review. Processes 2021, 9, 262. current advances and trends on thermal desalination are shown. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr9020262 Keywords: desalination; multi effect distillation; multi stage flash; vapor compression distillation; Received: 30 December 2020 renewable energies Accepted: 27 January 2021 Published: 29 January 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral 1. Introduction with regard to jurisdictional claims in Water on the planet is apparently abundant; however, most of it is salt water, repre- published maps and institutional affil- sented as seawater in a high percentage. Seawater is not suitable for human consumption iations. or for most man-made processes. Furthermore, distribution of fresh water throughout the world is not uniform. In some places, fresh surface or groundwater is abundant in sparsely populated places, such as Scandinavia, Alaska, parts of southern South America, northern Russia and Canada. In contrast, there are densely populated areas with growing Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. industrial areas, located in sites with a low fresh water availability; consequently, subjected Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. to a high degree of water stress according to the relationship between demand for water This article is an open access article and amount of water available [1]. As stated by the United Nations, more than two billion distributed under the terms and people in the world live in countries facing high water stress [2], an aggravated situation if conditions of the Creative Commons UNESCO’s projections for the period from 2017 to 2028 are considered, where it predicts Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// a greater demand for water not only for agriculture, whose consumption is 70% of the creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ demand worldwide, but also for energy production and generation [3]. Similarly, climate 4.0/). Processes 2021, 9, 262. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr9020262 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/processes Processes 2021, 9, 262 2 of 21 change, world population growth, contamination of fresh water sources, accelerated urban- ization in cities and expansion of public service networks also contribute to global water stress [4,5]. The World Water Program (WWP) hast estimated that by 2030 only 60% of water demanded will be available for consumption. Furthermore, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predicted that by 2050, availability will be lowered up to 55% and by the end of the century, 40% of the world’s population will live areas water stress regions [6]. Using seawater as a source of fresh water supply could be a solution to the increasing global water stress. Nonetheless, intensive energy requirements and prohibitive costs of desalination technologies restrain their massive use in many communities affected by water scarcity, even though having unlimited access to seawater [7,8]. Based on the International Desalination Association (IDA), in 2017, total capacity of all operating desalination plants worldwide was of 92.5 million m3/d [3]; however, the electrical or thermal energy used in the desalination process represents about 50% of the total cost of production [9]. The energy amount required for a desalination process depends on the quality of input water, level of water treatment, treatment technology used by the facility, and the treatment plant capacity [7,10,11]. As a substitute or replacement for electrical energy, desalination systems powered by renewable energies represent a real alternative to reduce operating costs in conventional desalination systems [12,13]. Table1 shows the energy required to produce 1 m3 of fresh water from distinct types of water sources. Table 1. Energy requirements for different water sources. Water Source Energy (kWh/m3) Seawater 2.58–8.5 Wastewater reuse 1.0–2.5 Wastewater treatment 0.62–0.87 Groundwater 0.48 Source: Reproduced from Refs. [7,14,15]. Generally, water desalination processes can be classified into phase change or thermal processes, and processes without phase change or by membranes [1,4,7,16–20]. The phase or thermal change process involves evaporation of salt water by contact with a heating surface (evaporation surface) leaving the salts in it; then, the fresh water vapor condenses in cooling pipes producing high-pressure water with quality and without salts [21]. The phase change or thermal technologies, available and of great commercial use, are Multi Effect Distillation (MED), Multi Stage Flash Distillation (MSF), Mechanical Vapor Compression (MVC), and Thermal Vapor Compression (TVC) [1,17,22,23]. Similarly, there are technologies that directly use solar radiation as an energy supplier, such as Solar Still (SS), Solar Chimney (SC), and Humidification/Dehumidification (HDH) [24], although they are not currently commercially available on a large scale. Desalination process without phase change consists of the use of membranes or any other element or material to directly separate the dissolved salts in the water, applying high doses of energy or pressure. Mem- brane techniques include Microfiltration (MF), Ultrafiltration (UF), Nanofiltration (NF), Membrane Bioreactor (MB), Membrane Distillation (MD), Electrodialysis (ED), and Reverse Osmosis (RO) [25]. These are pressure-driven processes to remove particles, bacteria, and salts from water by size exclusion through membranes with different pore sizes [26,27]. A diagram of the different technologies available for desalination of seawater or brackish water is shown in Figure1. ProcessesProcesses 20212021,, 99,, x 262 FOR PEER REVIEW 33 of of 22 21 FigureFigure 1. 1. AvailableAvailable desalination desalination technologies. technologies. Source: Source: Adapted Adapted from from Refs. Refs. [4,17,19,24]. [4,17,19,24]. HybridHybrid technologies technologies for for water water desalination desalination,, such such as as thermal thermal processes processes with with reverse reverse osmosis,osmosis, have been developeddeveloped since since the the end end of of the the last last century century [28 ].[28]. Similarly, Similarly, the combinedthe com- binedbenefits benefits of the of high the separationhigh separation efficiency efficiency of MSF of withMSF thewith low the energy low energy consumption consumption of RO of RO have been highlighted [29]. Nowadays, hybrid desalination technologies cover a Processes 2021, 9, x FOR PEER REVIEW 4 of 22 Processes 2021, 9, 262 4 of 21 broad spectrum, including the integration of RO with other membrane processes, such as haveED with been MD, highlighted and hybridization [29]. Nowadays, of RO or hybrid MSF with desalination other technologies technologies emerging cover a desali- broad spectrum, including the integration of RO with other membrane processes, such as ED with nation [4]. MD, and hybridization of RO or MSF with other technologies emerging desalination [4]. This paper aims to present a profound literature review of the different commercial This paper aims to present a profound literature review of the different commer- phase-change (thermal) desalination technologies
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