A review of co-generative and synergistic desalination & refrigeration systems for sustainable development applications

Abstract

Within the water-energy-food nexus, desalination and refrigeration cogeneration systems are able to address pressing sustainable development goals. Such systems exploit the synergy between the two processes to yield mutual benefits. This review evaluates existing cogeneration studies to recommend promising research directions for sustainable development applications such as simultaneous freshwater production and cold storage refrigeration. Compared to recent reviews of combined desalination and cooling systems, the novelty of this review is in its focus on refrigeration temperatures suitable for fresh food storage (between 0–15 °C), differentiating hybrid systems as Integrated or Coupled, and highlighting the potential technical and economic synergies between refrigeration and desalination systems for sustainable development applications. The key aspects examined included (1) capacity of desalination and refrigeration, (2) source of water and potential contaminants, (3) system design and synergies, (4) efficiency of energy and material resources, and (5) integration with renewable energy sources. The primary synergy in integrated systems was the simultaneous low-temperature evaporation of water and chilling of a cooling fluid. In coupled systems, the synergy comes from the usage of waste heat from refrigeration systems to drive thermal desalination processes. Regarding performance, the systems with the highest water recovery rates and thermal desalination efficiencies are hybrid multiple effect distillation systems. Promising directions for future research include experimentally validating numerically derived inferences, achieving deeper heat integration to improve system efficiency, and developing passive measures such as indirect evaporative cooling for simultaneous dehumidification, cooling, and water production.