TECHNICAL NOTE 034 — Multi Solar Desalination Plant
Ami Elazari
Millennium Electric T. O.U. Ltd.
P. O. Box 2646, Raanana 43650 Israel
Phone : 972-9-7439490 E-mail : Info@millenniumsolar. com
Desalination technology, which makes it possible to exploit sea water as a water source, is playing an increasingly important role throughout the world. However, its high energy consumption is costly (4-5kWh/1 cubic meter of desalinated water) and has a global environmental impact. The desalination process using solar energy in general and Multi Solar (MSS) technology specifically, would alleviate this problem, by lowering the energy consumption to 1.4 kWh/1 cubic meter of desalinated water.
Millennium Electric has developed a desalination system which uses the membrane distillation process providing the necessary heat and electricity generated solely by solar energy using the patented Multi Solar System PV/T collectors.
As illustrated in Fig. 1, the solar energy desalination plant produces fresh water by pumping sea water up through the membrane module before and after the water has been heated by the multi solar collector.
The MSS collector is used to provide all energy needs to:
• Heat the sea water;
• Pervaporation Membrane Separation;
• Condensation;
• Run the electrical pumps that control the total system;
•
Use the cold sea water as a coolant for the condensers.