Co-generation of Drinking Water and Domestic Hot Water Using Solar Thermal Integrated Membrane Distillation System

carcity of fresh water sources, rapid industrial development and increase of urban population in arid regions like UAE lead to tremendous increase in bottled water dependency for drinking purpose. The bottling process right from treatment to delivery is highly unsustainable and hence we focus on the issue of providing pure drinking water in a sustainable way through solar domestic hot water (SDHW) systems. The shift towards sustainability in the oil rich region and recent growth of interest on Membrane Distillation (MD) technique at small scale application development by coupling with solar energy source has motivated us to develop a combined SDHW-MD pilot unit for feasibility analysis. Present application is to co-generate 20 l/day of drinkable water and 250 l/day of domestic hot water for a single family house/villa in UAE region. Experiments are performed for municipal water purification and compared with empirical equation based model developed using laboratory experimental data along with PolySun simulations. Monthly energy consumption and water production profiles have been obtained which would form a basis for detailed dynamic simulation and optimization of system performance