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Experimental and Theoretical Study on Mechanical Performance of a Sustainable Method to Simultaneously Generate Power and Fresh Water

journal contribution
posted on 2024-11-02, 22:13 authored by Abhijit Shridhar DateAbhijit Shridhar Date, Oranit TraisakOranit Traisak, Matthew Ward, Eliza RupakhetiEliza Rupakheti, Eric Hu, Hamid KhayyamHamid Khayyam
Many regions around the world have limited access to clean water and power. Low-grade thermal energy in the form of industrial waste heat or non-concentrating solar thermal energy is an underutilized resource and can be used for water desalination and power generation. This paper experimentally and theoretically examines a thermoelectric-based simultaneous power generation and desalination system that can utilize low-grade thermal energy. The paper presents concept design and the theoretical analysis of the proposed system followed by experimental analysis and comparison with the theoretical estimations. Experiments were carried out at three heat loads 50, 100 and 150 W to achieve varying temperature gradients across thermoelectric generators. During the experiments, thermoelectric generators were maintained at a hot to cold side temperature difference between 20 to 60 °C. The experiments showed that the power generation flux and freshwater mass flux increased with the increase in the thermal energy source temperature. The power flux varied between 12 to 117 W/m2 of thermoelectric generator area, while freshwater mass flux varied between 4.8 to 23.7 kg/m2⋅h. The specific thermal energy consumption varied between 3.6 to 5.7 MJ/kg of freshwater; this is comparable to the single-stage conventional distillation system.

History

Journal

Sustainability

Volume

14

Issue

21

Start page

1

End page

15

Total pages

15

Publisher

MDPI

Place published

Switzerland

Language

English

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Former Identifier

2006118754

Esploro creation date

2023-01-20

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