Simulation studies and experimental validation on solar multi - effect desalination system

A solar energy-based multi - effect desalination (MED) system simulation model is developed for each system-level component using sea water as a working fluid. The solar flat plate collector arrays are modelled on the TRNSYS 18 platform. Thiruvananthapuram weather data is made to link with a flat plate module. Flash chamber, multi - effect evaporator, condenser and ejector are modelled in the MATLAB 2016b platform. Output from solar flat plat collector field and weather data from TRNSYS 18 platform are live linked with the platform using TRNSYS - MATLAB live link plugin mode. Thermophysical properties of sea water are modelled based on temperature, pressure and salinity. The simulation helps to understand the MED’s systematic behaviour using sea water properties. Besides, this gives an in-depth understanding of the component-level behaviour of solar MED system with respect to incident solar energy. Also, this system-level model is capable of predicting distillate output from the system with different operating conditions. Using this model, the simulation results are validated with the experiments conducted on a solar MED system with 10 m 3 of fresh water as a capacity in Vivekananda Kendra, Kanyakumari, India. It is observed that the average freshwater production rate was 300 kg.h \protect \relax \special {t4ht=−}1 during peak production between 10:00 to 15:00 h both in simulation and experimental systems. • System-level simulation is developed for the solar MED system. • Modelled using TRNSYS - MATLAB live link. • Surface heat losses are considered. • System-level model is compared with experimental results from the solar MED system. • Similar production rate is observed in both simulation and experimental systems.