Modeling and performance analysis of a solar thermal desalination system using simulation in TRNSYS software

Solar energy is one of the clean and sustainable solutions to fight freshwater scarcity in hot and arid regions. The current paper presents the design of a thermal desalination system powered by solar energy for large-scale freshwater production by using the TRNSYS software. Solar collectors' Energy supply accounts for saline Water's required phase change, with a six-stage separator to extract the generated steam from saline Water. More precisely, heat exchangers condense the generated steam and heat the feeding saline water before the solar collectors are in place. Further, the concerned simulation has taken the meteorological data from Bandar Abbas due to high solar irradiation and its closeness with seawater from the Persian Gulf. Consequently, the computer-based simulated results highlighted that on occasions of maximum solar radiation, the solar collector exit temperature reached approximately 190°C. However, in the case of the temperature increase of the water required to produce steam, it takes quite some time; hence, on the ground, this installation operates about 6 hours a day despite the available 10-hour active solar radiation. On a day like that, 470 000 m 3 of Freshwater would have been produced, whereas on one of the hottest weeks during the whole year in late May, it is very confident of showing a yield of 45%. The system's efficiency was also calculated to be 43%, even on the year's coldest days. A short comparison with other available studies further confirmed the system's effectiveness. Therefore, this research highlights solar energy's viability as a renewable and clean approach to solving water shortage problems in hot and arid regions.