Publication Details
Abstract
Today, human societies are increasingly confronted with the problem of a shortage of fresh water as a result of rapidly growing populations, a progressively more industrial and agriculturally intensive world, and climate change. This situation has turned desalination into a strategic option for guaranteeing water security in arid and semi, arid regions. On the one hand, it was possible to come up with alterative technologies such as reverse osmosis (RO), multi, stage flash distillation (MSF), and multi, effect distillation (MED); on the other hand, the widespread use of these facilities has been hampered by the problems connected with their greatly energy, consuming, high operational costs, and dependence on fossil fuels. Consequently, the deployment of renewable energy, particularly solar energy, in this field has garnered a lot of attention as a potential and lasting carbon emission, reduction and long, run operational costs, reducing approach. The authors of this paper suggest that the solar desalination technologies can be divided into two types: passive solar stills, which are characteristically simple in design and do not require external energy, and active solar stills, which either utilize thermal or photovoltaic collectors or a thermal storage system to achieve high efficiency. Their experimental and theoretical work on this topic has been concentrating on approaching the system's performance by means of a number of techniques such as change in basin depth, usage of absorptive materials and nano, coatings, optimization of cover and absorber surface angles, and implementation of auxiliary systems like evacuated tube collectors or parabolic dishes. Comparison of different configurations has proven that the combination of solar and wind energy or energy storage creates a hybrid system that is more flexible in use and has better economic performance, thus strengthening the reliability of these solutions in off, grid areas. The survey sums up by saying that the incorporation of design features and renewable energy sources paves the way for a cleaner and more efficient desalination system. Nevertheless, issues around the stability of these solutions in the long term, their initial investment costs, and the necessity of supportive policies are still very significant factors that limit the extent to which they can be industrially exploited.