Simulating two Algerian cities' desalination plants coupled with solar energy systems using TRNSYS

Abstract

The Bouzaréah in northern Algeria's province and Ghardaïa in southern Algeria's province are particularly vulnerable to drought and water scarcity, even if apparent differences in climatic conditions mark each region. Though it may seem counterintuitive, Ghardaïa has considerable water resources that could be tapped for agriculture. Our study aimed to design a prototype of a desalination unit coupled with a solar collector for these two provinces using the TRNSYS 16. The desalination unit is composed of vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) coupled with a solar collector, and the photovoltaic has been designed according to the climatic conditions of each region. In this work, the approach adopted is to integrate a model developed in the literature into a simulation environment (TRNSYS) coupled with the CODE-BLOCKS compiler and FORTRAN programming language to create a new component (i.e., VMD process). The permeation flux and the power to load reached their maximum values with the charge of solar irradiation 48 kg/h m2 and 6,300 kJ/h, respectively, for Ghardaïa at the sun irradiation value 800 W/m2 and temperature of 34 °C. Results showed that Ghardaïa had a higher GOR value than Bouzaréah over the year (10.947 vs. 8.3389).