Assessment of Reverse Osmosis Process for Brackish Water Desalination in the Jordan Valley
Date
2017-09-12
Authors
عمارنه, بتول مصطفى يوسف
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
An-Najah National University
Abstract
This thesis investigates the assessment of three suggested energy systems that power an existing desalination unit, which are: Photovoltaic (PV) system, Diesel Generator (DG) system, and hybrid powered system. All systems use Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology to desalinate Brackish Water (BWRO) in Az Zubaidat desalination unit located in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank.
A general framework was followed; a cost analysis procedure was conducted which analyzed the economic viability of the systems using Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER Pro) a software program developed by the U.S National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Three different scenarios were analyzed economically and environmentally using HOMER Pro ,the third scenario was to operate the system for twice the time as it is using hybrid system consist of Photovoltaic/Battery/diesel generator (PV/Battery/DG) with different sensitivity variables which gave an optimal configuration with the least COE of $0.424/kWh when the fuel price is minimum(1.3$/L) and the solar scaled average is maximum(8.91kWh/m2/day) , for both 6 and zero Interest Rate(IR) ,the best configuration compromises of 10 kW diesel generator, a 27.2 kW of PV modules and 24 batteries of 1.75 kWh capacities, and the system has 70% renewable energy fraction with a 68% GHG reduction.
We recommend that policy makers should take into consideration ccombining both renewable and conventional energies with desalination units; in addition, designing such units should be an integrated process between both engineers and economists.