Brine Treatment by Solar Energy: Case Study in Tor-Sinai - Egypt

THE absence of scalable, low energy requirement for brine treatment present a real threat and coming disaster for future generations targeting RO desalination. Brine with a certain concentration was evaporated with different solar concentrators and the effect of evaporation time on liquid concentration by variation in concentrator's volume. The effect of different concentrator's volume on the recovered condensate fresh water and weight of precipitated salts was showed. The thermal solar efficiency was found to exceed 90% for the different applied capacities. The concentrator volume was largely affecting the rate of evaporation in the closed and exposed ones. The excellent morphology and purity of precipitated salts with full characterization with the designed closed solar concentrator when compared with the exposed ones was shown. This morphology as spherical, agglomerated particle having a variety of particle size distribution, i.e., distinguished crystals for solar concentrator compared with continuous distribution for solar ponds. The ease of concentrator's design and the adverse effect of volume enlargement on operability for incident solar energy 300 W/m(2), makes the implementation of multilayer small capacity solar concentrator is an alternative.