Simulators Selection for Design and Simulation of a CSP-Driven Forward Osmosis Process

Coupling of desalination technologies and renewable energy systems is relatively a new concept, which is used either to provide energy to a desalination system or to generate simultaneously power and drinking water. The aim of this paper is to select the most convenient simulator to study a plant combining concentrated solar power and forward osmosis dedicated to electricity and drinking water producing for populations in arid regions. Thus, a state of the art of the available steady-state simulators has been carried out. The design and simulation models and the use of these simulators in the already-published papers have been investigated. It has been revealed that there is a lack of simulators having all the required models to analyze solar energy-driven desalination processes. Thereby, most authors use two simulators, one general for chemical processes and the other specific to renewable energy systems. Besides that, simulators with pre-built models for FO unit does not exist. Open source solutions were selected over commercial ones for several reasons. They offer open access to the application elements, so new modules can be easily added or modified. Furthermore, they can interoperate and communicate with other applications. Finally, based on the supported models and development tools, we have chosen SAM and DWSIM as the suitable open source simulators for our project.