DESIGN AND SETUP OF A HYBRID SOLAR SEAWATER DESALINATION SYSTEM: THE AQUASOL PROJECT

Despite the energy efficiency advances reached during the last decade, seawater desalination continues to be an intensive fossil energy consumer. In the current global framework, with growing oil price instability and the environmental requirements derived from compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, the sustainability of this technological solution inevitably passes through continued improvement of energy efficiency of the physical processes involved, as well as the use of renewable energy resources, such as for example, solar energy. In 2002, the R&D European Project AQUASOL was initiated at the Plataforma Solar de Almería for the purpose of improving the existing solar thermal seawater desalination technology based on the multi-effect distillation process. After the conclusion of the research phase, a completely new desalination system has been designed and its implementation has been initiated for testing during the demonstration phase. This paper describes the final design of the overall system, and all the erection work performed