Abstract
Availability of clean drinking water and power are two important issues in the world. In this paper, an innovative new design of multi effect desalination coupled with mechanical vapor compression (MED-MVC) powered by supercritical organic Rankine cycle utilizing a low grade solar heat source using evacuated tube collectors is analyzed. The supercritical organic Rankine cycle efficiency is about 10% at 150 degrees C and 5MPa with R152a as the working fluid. The performance of the LT-MED-MVC was found to be better than similar systems found in the literature. The specific power consumption for MVC is lower than 1 kWh/m(3) for seawater feed salinity of 42,000 ppm, 14 forward feed effects, and a recovery rate of 50%. The overall system efficiency is 7%. The impact of increasing the number of effects on the performance ratio, effect specific area, specific power consumption, solar collector area, and the system efficiency are also analyzed in this paper.