International Journal of Scientific Research & Engineering Trends

Volume 7, Issue 5, Sept- Oct-2021, ISSN (Online): 2395-566X

Review Paper on Solar Seawater Desalination by Using

Reverse Osmosis
Prof. K. S. Kamble, Shivam Pawar, Shubham Sawant, Siddhant Narkar, Prathamesh Rane
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
S.S.P.M’s College of Engineering,
Kankavli, India

Abstract- Desalination plants are providing very effective solution to meet the required demand of drinking water from saline
water. It focuses on design and modelling of portable solar based Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination plant. The proposed
plant is run by a stand-alone Solar system with battery storage. The total energy requirement of the plant is estimated to
predict the capacity of solar panel, sizing the charge controller, power supply, and storage system. Purification of saline water
using solar powered desalination methods is an efficient solution to the water scarcity at ships, which represents a promising
sustainable solution of desalination plants.

Keywords- Solar, Desalination, Reverse Osmosis.

I. INTRODUCTION  Facilitate the transfer between the two countries of

technology developed under this agreement. The solar
It’s true that freshwater scarcity is associated with large energy research institute (seri), as the operating agent,
quantity of solar resource. It seems also logical and is responsible for implementing
attractive to associate those two parameters for countries
where grid electricity is not spread widely and with easy SOLERAS in accordance with directives of the SOLERAS
access to seawater or brackish water. Solar desalination is Executive Board, which has approved a five-year technical
not a new idea: it has been known for ages, antique sailors program plan. As part of this technical program plan, an
used to desalt water with simple and small sized solar area of Industrial Solar Applications for solar techno logy
stills. It’s also a fact that production of fresh water requires has been identified.
a large amount of energy: 1000 m3 of freshwater per day
requires 10 000 tons of oil per year [1]. The objectives of the Industrial Solar Applications
program are to introduce solar energy technologies into
Though solar energy is often labelled as ‘free energy’, it’s industrial applications and foster the establishment of
not so simple to evaluate feasibility and cost for solar domestic industries using renewable energy sources,
desalination. Some technologies will not be taken in thereby lessening industrial dependence on fossil fuels and
account in this paper: solar ponds, which are a direct minimizing deleterious effects on the environment.
desalination method, as well as desalination with
electrodialysis (whose application is restricted to low A specific objective is to demonstrate the use of solar
salinity water). energy in desalinating water. Water desalination is needed
in both Saudi Arabia and the United States. In Saudi
II. LITERATURE REVIEW Arabia, water is needed principally for municipal and
agricultural applications. In the United States, desalination
In October 1977, Saudi Arabia and the United States is mainly required to control river salinity and provide
potable water to selected communities that have critical
signed a Project Agreement for Cooperation in the Field of
water quality problems or water shortages.
Solar Energy (SOLERAS) under the auspices of the
United States Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on
Economic Cooperation. Conventionally powered desalting plants have been in
operation for several years At the begining of 1977, about
The objectives of the agreement are to: 1 500 land-based, fossil- fueled or electric-powered
desalting plants with a minimum capacity of 100 m3/day
 Cooperate in the field of solar energy technology for
were in operation or under construction throughout the
the mutual benefit of the two countries, including the
world. These plants are capable of producing nearly 4
development and stimulation of solar industries within
million cubic metres of fresh water daily for municipal or
the two countries;
industrial uses. Distillation processes account for 77% of
 Advance the development of solar energy technology the total plant capacity; the balance is almost entirely
in the two countries; and membrane processes.

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 International Journal of Scientific Research & Engineering Trends
Volume 7, Issue 5, Sept- Oct-2021, ISSN (Online): 2395-566X

III. REVERSE OSMOSIS 2. Solar:

Solar energy technology can be divided into two general
RO is the most common desalination process due to its categories: solar thermal and solar electric. Solar thermal
efficiency compared to thermal desalination systems, refers to the collection of solar energy as heat. Low and
despite the need for water pre-treatment. Economic and medium temperature systems are flat plate collectors with
reliability considerations are the main challenges to a large number of tubes encase d in a transparent plastic
improving PV powered RO desalination systems. enclosure. The transparent plastic creates a greenhouse
However, plummeting PV panel costs make solar-powered effect and the trapped heat is then transferred to the
desalination more feasible. working fluid which has a high heat capacity.

Solar-powered RO desalination is common in High temperature systems use reflectors to concentrate

demonstration plants due to the modularity and scalability solar energy in order to generate water vapours to power a
of both PV and RO systems. An economic analysis that steam turbine. While these systems are highly efficient,
explored an optimisation strategy of PV- powered RO the application of concentrated solar power for electricity
reported favorable results. generation is somewhat restricted to large scale
installations. These systems can be used as a direct source
of thermal energy for distillation processes. Thermal
energy can be stored in large masses of concrete, ceramics,
or other such media (Eltawil et al., 2009).

3. Simple Water Filter:

Very little of the water we use every day comes out of the
ground completely pure. Some of the impurities are
microscopic, but many are large enough to remove with a
crude filtration system that you can make yourself using
sand and rocks.

It's important to remember that this filter does not render

the water potable. Enjoy the experiment, noting how much
clearer the water appears after passing through it, but don't
drink any of the filtered water, because it may still contain
pathogens.

4. RO Membrane:
Fig 1. Reverse Osmosis. RO membranes are typically capable of removing 90%–
99% of contaminants such as total dissolved solids (TDSs)
1. Working Principle: in the water supply. The membranes are usually
The strengthening of requirements for the protection of manufactured as a flat sheet of thin composite membranes
surface-water sources and increases in the cost of reagents consisting of an active polyamide layer (high permeability
lead to the necessity of using membrane (especially, but impermeable to dissolved salts and particulate matter)
reverse osmosis) technologies of water desalination as an supported by a porous polysulphone layer wound round a
alternative to ion-exchange technologies. central collection tube.

The peculiarities of using reverse osmosis technologies in

the desalination of waters with an increased salinity have
been discussed. An analogy has been made between the
dependence of the adsorptive capacity of ion-exchange
resins on the reagent consumption during ion exchange
and the dependence of the specific ion flux on the voltage
in the electrodialysis and productivity of membrane
elements on the excess of the pressure of source water
over the osmotic pressure in reverse osmosis.

It has been proposed to regulate the number of water

desalination steps in reverse osmosis plants, which makes
it possible to flexibly change the productivity of
equipment and the level of desalinization, depending on
the requirements for the technological process. Fig 2. RO Membrane.

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 International Journal of Scientific Research & Engineering Trends
Volume 7, Issue 5, Sept- Oct-2021, ISSN (Online): 2395-566X

The RO membranes used are semi-permeable polymeric V. SCOPE

thin layers adhering to a thick support layer. Membranes
are usually made of cellulose acetates, polyamides, Desalinated water is produced by either using brackish
polyimides, and poly-sulfones. water (water with salt content of less than 10,000 mg/L),
or seawater which salinity in a range of 30,000 to 44,000
IV. MINERAL CARTRIDGE mg/L. While desalination of brackish water offers
opportunities to produce lower cost water, it’s unlikely to
After the water has passed through the RO membrane, it is be a main source of alternative water supply in the future.
then made to pass through a mineral cartridge. The total volume of brackish water worldwide is limited
(less than 1% of the world’s water) and, in most arid
During the process, it extracts minerals from the mineral regions of the world, it is almost fully utilized.
balls present in the cartridge. Some cartridges come with
PH booster balls and in that case, the PH of water The world’s oceans contain over 97.2 % of the planet’s
improves and the water becomes alkaline. water resources. The high salinity of ocean water, and the
significant costs associated with seawater desalination,
means most of the world’s water supply has traditionally
come from fresh water sources: groundwater aquifers,
rivers and lakes. However, changing climate patterns
combined with population growth pressures and limited
availability of new and inexpensive fresh water supplies,
are shifting the water industry’s attention – the world is
looking to the ocean for fresh water.

VI. OBJECTIVE
Fig 3. Mineral Catridge. While making the project following points should be
covered as much as possible:
1. Working Methodology:  Low energy consumption.
The machine makes use of a 3 stage process to convert  Easy and ready to use: immediate stop and start.
salty seawater to pure drinkable water. The system first  Needs important pre-treatment: pre-filtration and
allows user to pour salty water via a mesh based inlet chemical (anti-scalant) to avoid fouling on the
where large waste like plastic granules or stones, weed etc. membrane.
gets separated. This water is then pumped into a large  Outlet salt concentration around 500 ppm.
purification chamber having 3 layers of purifiers including  It should be made at possible low cost.
sand and gravel for filtering weed, sand and large salt  Its maintenance should be simple and no skilled
particles. labours should require.
The output of this process is still salty water but without
any particles. This water is then passed on to the second VII. CONCLUSION
filtration where we use reverse osmosis to filter out salt
from the water. Here we use 3 filtration membranes to In this paper we compared the cost-effectiveness, energy-
filter out fresh water from salty water and trap the salt efficiency, and other relevant quantities of these potential
particles in membrane filters. solardesalination systems, and concluded that the direct
solar-desalination systems using solar-thermal collectors
This water is now stored in a tank just above the system. appear to be most attractive for highly energy-efficient
The system tap when opened allows water to run from the solar-desalination systems, although there are significant
tank to the tap where we detect the flow when on and turn technical challenges remaining.
on the UV light for stage 3 filtration to deactivate any
remaining bacteria and virus in the water. This water is Further, we overviewed the economics and practical issues
now in drinkable form using 3 stage processes without the associated with employing cost-effective solardesalination
use of any chlorine. systems to provide for economic water sources for urban
and also agricultural areas.
Now the pumps used in the system are powered by a large
battery. This battery is in turn charged by 2 x 50Watt solar We considered factors that have significant impact to these
panels due to large availability of solar power in sea areas. solar-desalination systems: including location, climate,
This makes it very portable to be used on any beach front and access to ocean water or brackish water sources, as
or on long sea voyages for easy and instant sea water well as land-use and ecological issues. We observe that the
filtration. most favorable locations are those with high solar

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 International Journal of Scientific Research & Engineering Trends
Volume 7, Issue 5, Sept- Oct-2021, ISSN (Online): 2395-566X

irradiance, lack of fresh water but access to large brackish

water sources and/or seawater.

The most favorable locations appear to include

considerable sections of North and East Africa, the Middle
East, Southern Europe, Western South America, Australia,
Northern Mexico, and South-West USA; each has
particular issues and challenges unique to their location.

Nevertheless, we conclude that the development of cost-

effective and energy-efficient solar-desalination systems
may well be key to a future “terraforming” of otherwise
desert and near-desert regions of the world, providing a
“Greening” of these regions.

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