Iranian (UT) Researchers Produce Fresh, Hot Water with Photovoltaic Systems

TEHRAN (ANA)- A group of engineers at a knowledge-based company in Iran produced desalination systems based on solar panels to provide drinking water to underprivileged areas which can also simultaneously heat the water.

 “This device has been designed to be portable, and it is also possible to provide the necessary energy for the processes through solar cells,” said Milad Qahramani, the manager of ‘Farayand Group’, a knowledge-based company,

He explained that in the series of PVT devices of this company, both the production of fresh water and the creation of hot air are available, adding that in order to commercialize the device, they have prepared a series of economic programs for customers so that some of its purchase costs are covered by the company's investors who are among the benefactors, so that people can pay less for the purchase.

“After the solar energy is reflected to the solar panels, they produce the necessary electricity, and since the solar panels are of the PVT type, in addition to generating electricity, the flow of hot water that passes behind the panels increases the efficiency of the panels to generate more electricity,” Qahramani said.

Researchers at the School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Tehran had earlier designed and offered an innovative environmentally-friendly system for supplying freshwater from the sea water to remote areas.

Ehsan Hooshfar, an Associate Professor of Energy Conversion at the University of Tehran (UT), was the executive director of the project to desalinate sea water and supply drinking water to remote areas.

“In this research, a new solution for desalination of sea water has been proposed, which is called Humidification-dehumidification or HDH for short, and is inspired by the process of rain production. In fact, the use of desalination systems for desalination of sea water, which is one of the conventional ways of supplying fresh water, is done in many ways each of which comes with pros and cons,” Hooshfar said.

“The advantage of the method introduced in this research is less energy consumption than other methods. It uses the waste heat produced by other systems,” the UT researcher said, adding, “In this research, an independent desalination unit using HDH, solar panels for simultaneous production of electricity and heat or hotovoltaic/thermal (PVT) solar hybrid system and compression chiller is proposed to provide stable water to remote areas that have access to sea water. The system operates in a way that is that the solar panel provides the electricity required for the chiller and the heat required for the HDH, and the incoming seawater is preheated by the condenser of the chiller. This way, the overall performance of the system in fresh water production is significantly improved.”

“Modeling of this system was done by using an artificial neural network trained for tri-objective optimization by employing a genetic algorithm. The goals of this optimization included maximizing fresh water production, minimizing costs, and maximizing system efficiency,” Hooshfar added.

“The results showed that this system is technically and economically competitive in producing fresh water with other desalination units for remote areas. Also, due to the correct choice of refrigerant and the use of renewable energy, it is environmentally friendly,” the UT professor added.