Pouya Ifaei

Efficient thermal desalination technologies with renewable energy systems: A state-of-the-art review

Due to the current fossil fuel crisis and associated adverse environmental impacts, renewable energy sources (RES) have drawn interest as alternatives to fossil fuels for powering water desalination systems. Over the last few decades the utility of renewable energy sources such as solar, geothermal, and wind to run desalination processes has been explored. However, the expansion of these technologies to larger scales is hampered by techno-economic and thermo-economic challenges. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art in the field of renewable energy-powered thermal desalination systems (RE-PTD) to compare their productivity and efficiency through thermodynamic, economic, and environmental analyses. We performed a comparative study using published data to classify RE-PTD systems technologies on the basis of the energy collection systems that they use. Among RE-PTD systems, solar energy powered-thermal desalination systems demonstrate high thermo-environ-economic efficiency to produce fresh water to meet various scales of demand.

Control performance evaluation of reverse osmosis desalination system based on model predictive control and PID controllers

AbstractIn this study, to design an efficient control system for a Reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant, a model predictive control (MPC) was established and compared to the obtained control system based on proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controllers. In order to control two controlled variables, namely permeate flow rate and conductivity, two PID controllers’ parameters were tuned based on the internal model control (IMC) rule and an MPC controller was established using the dynamic matrix control algorithm. The control performance assessment of both PID and MPC controllers were carried out using prediction error approach and their control performances were compared to that of the PID controllers which tuned by Ziegler–Nichols rule from the literature. The results showed that among the designed controllers, the PID controllers tuned by IMC method are more capable than other controllers to control the considered RO desalination plant.