Abstract
The evaporative desalination system using solar thermal energy would be the efficient and attractive method to get fresh water from brine due to low carbon dioxide generation. In this research the solar desalination system as a heating source of refrigerant R123 in the evaporator was considered. The circulation of refrigerant in the evaporator can reduce the energy consumption of the system, because of using the latent heat of the refrigerant 123 instead of the sensible heat of present hot water. The system was comprised of the single-stage fresh water production unit on the capacity of 1ton/day with shell and tube type evaporator, heaters instead of solar collector to supply the proper heat to refrigerant, and refrigerant and brine circulation systems. Various operating flowrate and temperature ranges were varied in the experiments to get the optimum design data. The results showed that the optimum flow rate of brine feed rate to evaporator was 1.2Liter/min, and the yield of fresh water was increased as higher temperature of feed brine. It was confirmed that the circulation flowrate of heating source of refrigerant was decrease of one fifth of the present warm water system, and very efficient system for solar desalination.
