Renewable energy power reverse osmosis system for seawater desalination plant

This project focused on the latest developments in the renewable energy to power a small reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant which provided a small group of people with freshwater in a remote area in Egypt. The aim of this work is to estimate an optimum energy system required for a water treatment plant that produces 125 L/h (3 m(3)/d) at constant daily load profile using one of the renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. First of all, the power required for the reverse osmosis plant to produce 3 m(3) of freshwater per day had been calculated manually and the total plant design had been performed using water application value engine (WAVE) software presented by DOW water and process solutions company. Secondly, for solar and wind energy, PVSyst V6.75 software and manual calculations were used to estimate the daily energy production. Of course solar and wind energy are clean, free, and renewable sources of energy, it depends on the site location. As Egypt has its long coastline, it is highly recommended as a perfect location for desalination plants powered by renewable energy sources. Mersa Matruh governorate was assumed in this study to be the location of the plant.