Desalination process in microgrid based management platform

Abstract

Desalination powered by a microgrid is becoming an important task for a large number of countries with water shortage. Even with countries in sufficient supply of water from the nature, desalination is crucial for residents in remote and isolated regions such as islands. Production capacity of a desalination plant depends on the number of beneficiaries. When the number of beneficiaries is on the order of 100, microgrid based desalination plant can be a competitive solution. This work presents a desalination process conducted in a microgrid based desalination management platform. Desalination plant operated by renewable energy is implemented and tested. Since most of electric power consumed in the platform is used for high pressure pump, it is our main concern to observe the relation between the high pressure pump and other controllable device(s), e.g., the retentate valve. It is found from the observations that the retentate valve can affect the operation of desalination process by means of its openness.