Performance of reverse osmosis pilot plant powered by Photovoltaic in Jordan

This paper presents the work performed within ADIRA project funded by European Union as a consortium of many countries to boost the integration of desalination units with renewable energy in rural areas. The work focused on the study of Water desalination by Reverse Osmosis (RO) and electricity generation using Photovoltaic Technology (PV) with additional battery storage. RO-PV system has been successfully designed, installed and tested in Hartha Charitable Society in northern part of Jordan as part of the ADIRA project. The system is composed of PV panels (433 Wp), softener and compact RO unit with typical daily water production of 500 L The system produced clean drinking water from a salty water feed with salt content up to 1700 mg/L The technical details of the RO plant, the energy supply and the operation strategies of the system are presented in this study. The effect of meteorological data like solar insolation, ambient temperature, daily sunshine hours on the performance of the RO-PV system are studied. Furthermore, effect of operating pressure and temperature on recovery percentage, salt rejection and specific energy consumption in addition to details about the PV current and voltage are also discussed. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.