Modeling and Simulation of Medium Temperature Solar Thermal Rankine Cycle for Arid regions of Pakistan for Energy and Clean Water Production /

Abstract

The use of renewable energy sources to produce electrical energy and fresh water seems to be a cost-effective way to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels. To reach the objective of achieving 30% renewable energy by 2030 it would be beneficial to tap enormous solar potential of Pakistan, especially in the arid regions. With the recent developments in solar energy conversion technologies, concentrating solar power (CSP) system attached with desalination technology for power and clean water production has become an attractive solution. Currently, CSP systems using Parabolic Trough Collectors (PTCs) are dominating the global CSP market since these are the most mature technology and the most installed CSP systems in the world. The much lower primary energy consumption of reverse Osmosis (RO) compared to other desalination techniques suggests that RO is the preferred desalination technology. In this paper, only the electricity output of the CSP plant would be exploited in order to meet both power and clean water demands because RO is the only desalination technique which requires electricity to operate. Therefore, Simulation of a proposed solar power plant is executed using the TRNSYS software under climatic conditions of Quetta valley in Pakistan which results in power output of 15 MW. Quetta is selected due to high direct normal radiation and scarcity of the clean water.