Avaliação de um dessalinizador via osmose inversa usando energia solar fotovoltaica: estudo do consumo energético e custos.

Abstract

Water is the most characteristic and abundant constituent of the Earth. Well common and essential to humanity, is the most diverse purposes, provided for human consumption until the industrial use, can be characterized as a form of energy more essential to life and the maintenance of ecosystems. Despite its enormous importance and essentiality to the existence of life on earth there is an earnestness unacceptable as the management and conservation of water resources of our planet. Because of this quest is to improve the quality of life and minimize the problem of lack of drinking water, this work aims at evaluating the process of desalination by reverse osmosis using solar photovoltaics, their energy consumption and costs. For that has been developed and installed at the Reference Laboratory in Desalination (LABDES), at the Federal University of Campina Grande, a system consists of two membranes, reverse osmosis, powered by a set of sixteen photovoltaic panels. The performance of the system was evaluated with sodium chloride solutions with concentrations ranging from 1000, 1200, 1500 and 2000 mg/L. Variables measures such as: pressure, voltage, current flow and which were obtained through the electric sensors and stored on the computer by the Software Data Aquisition allowed to assess the following parameters: current, voltage of the engine, electric power, flow rates of the permeate and concentrate , retrieval and consumption of energy per m3 of water produced. Concentrations of water, food irradiation and solar influence considerably the pressure, and consequently the production of water permeate. The system showed technical conditions to produce 0.17 m³ / h of desalinated water at a cost of $ 6.78.