Papers by Lourdes García-Rodríguez
Desalination and Water Treatment, 2010
This paper deals with a project entitled "Seawater Desalination by Innovative Solar-Powered Membr... more This paper deals with a project entitled "Seawater Desalination by Innovative Solar-Powered Membrane Distillation System", MEDESOL (FP6-2005-Global-4, FP6-036986). The main project objective is the development and experimental assessment of solar multi-stage MD concept in order to obtain a high-efficiency and cost-effective system for stand-alone seawater desalination. This concept is based on the use of some MD modules connected with a particular design arrangement to minimize both, main and auxiliary energy consumptions. The selection of the system configuration is based on a generic membrane distillation module. This paper selects the configuration of the MD system among different candidate designs, set the prospects of solar MD technology as function of available MD modules and assess the influence on system efficiency of main operational parameters of an individual module: temperature gradient across the membranes and maximum working temperature.
Energy, 2011
Solar power assisted different techniques of MED-VC (multi effect distillation-vapor compression)... more Solar power assisted different techniques of MED-VC (multi effect distillation-vapor compression) processes is thermo-economically analyzed and evaluated. In this work, two techniques of solar power cycles are considered to power on MED-PF-TVC, MVC (multi effect distillation thermal and mechanical vapor compressions). In the first technique, the developed solar thermal power is directly transmitted from the solar collector field via boiler heat exchanger unit toward the steam ejector of the MED-PF-TVC process. In the second technique, the electrical power generated from the SORC (Solar Organic Rankine Cycle) is used to power on the vapor compressor of the MED-PF-MVC process. The comparison is implemented according to the operation of PTC (parabolic trough collector) with Toluene organic oil and Water working fluids (2nd technique). Therminol-VP1 HTO (Heat Transfer Oil) is considered across the solar field and water is considered for boiler heat exchanger (1st technique). A case study is performed according to 4545 m 3 /day of distillate product. As a result, reducing the value of compression ratio with increasing the evaporator's numbers would reduce the specific power consumption, solar field area, and thermo-economic costs. Also it is clear that the operation of steam ejector would increase the gain ratio instead of increasing the evaporator's numbers.
Process simulation has become an accepted tool for the performance, design, and optimization calc... more Process simulation has become an accepted tool for the performance, design, and optimization calculations of solar desalination process units. Solving the mathematical models representing these units and systems is a tedious and repetitive problem. Nested iterative procedures are usually needed to solve these models. Also, the process configurations are characterized by existence of a number of recycle streams. To tackle these problems, several researchers have developed different methods, techniques, and computer programs for the simulation of a very wide range of variety of solar desalination process units and systems. It is of interest in this work to show and demonstrate a new program working under Matlab/ SimuLink environments for solar desalination processes calculation and modeling. Using these environments a visual design and simulation for different types and configurations of standalone (common) and solar desalination processes can be performed. Embedded user block programming with SimuLink is implemented to construct a flexible reliable and friendly user-interface package. The solar heating systems and desalination plant components (named here as blocks), such as heat exchangers, flash chambers, evaporators, pumps, steam ejector, compressor, reverse osmosis membrane, pipes, etc., are stored as icons in a visual library. This library enables the user to construct different configurations by just clicking the mouse over the required units (blocks). The interface aids designers, and operators to perform different analyses and calculations such as energy, exergy, and thermoeconomics. Typical desalination processes such as multi stage flash, and reverse osmosis are presented to show the wide scope and the validity, reliability, and capability of the developed package.
Uploads
Papers by Lourdes García-Rodríguez