Show Summary Details

Page of

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Environmental Science. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 07 February 2025

An Innovative Approach to Hybridizing Two Established Desalination Technologies or Toward Ensuring a Future Global Water Supply: Using a Hybrid Multieffect Desalination with an Adsorption Cyclelocked

An Innovative Approach to Hybridizing Two Established Desalination Technologies or Toward Ensuring a Future Global Water Supply: Using a Hybrid Multieffect Desalination with an Adsorption Cyclelocked

  • Muhammad Wakil ShahzadMuhammad Wakil ShahzadNorthumbria University
  • , and Muhammad AhmadMuhammad AhmadNorthumbria University

Summary

The global water supply–demand gap is rising with population growth, urbanization trends, and industrialization. This situation is expected to push 40% of the world’s population below the water scarcity level by 2050. As of 2023, 20,000 desalination plants converting more than 40 bm3 of water annually in 150 countries. However, the energy-intensive operation, high desalination cost, and environmental footprint of conventional desalination systems require a technological breakthrough in the field to sustainably cope with the demand. This study presents a comprehensive and innovative approach to hybridizing two established desalination technologies for higher energy efficiency, higher water productivity, lower cost, and improved environmental operation. The proposed system is a hybrid multieffect desalination (MED) with an adsorption cycle (ad). The advantages of the proposed system include low-temperature operation (below ambient), double water production over the same top brine temperature, and high thermodynamic efficiency. A pilot-scale MEDAD with a water production capacity of 10 m3/day has been developed and tested. The study showed that the hybridization of the AD cycle with the conventional MED system decreased the bottom brine temperature to approximately 20 °C compared to 40 °C of the conventional MED system. Meanwhile, the productivity of hybrid systems surged to 2–3 times that of the conventional system. Moreover, the system operates at approximately 20% of the thermodynamic limit, which is the highest for any desalination system hitherto. Therefore, the system can be scaled up for any higher productivity as the most viable solution to desalinate seawater.

Subjects

  • Sustainability and Solutions

You do not currently have access to this article

Login

Please login to access the full content.

Subscribe

Access to the full content requires a subscription