A PV Powered BWRO Desalination Installation with Energy Recovery and Hydro-Pneumatic Energy Storage

This MSc. Thesis project was performed at the Sanitary Engineering Department of the TU Delft as part of the Sustainable Energy Technology program. It is one of the unique research projects performed in the field of renewable driven Reverse Osmosis desalination, producing fresh water with only renewable energy sources as driving force. With the ever-increasing awareness regarding fossil fuel depletion and the global fresh water scarcity, developing innovative renewable powered desalination solutions has claimed its spot amongst the top future development goals. Reverse Osmosis (RO) has proven to be one of the key technologies, showing great potential in combination with renewable energy sources. However, due to the intermittent nature of renewables and the continuous operational requirements of RO membranes, the development of cheap, reliable and environmentally benign energy storage solutions is required. Previously research has been performed on an innovative Photo Voltaic (PV) driven brackish water RO system with an energy recovery device and pressurized water storage. Inspired by and based on the results obtained during the project mentioned above, a novel concept with hydro-pneumatic energy storage was designed and implemented. The scope of this project was to implement and test the designed pilot plant, after completion of a comprehensive literature research and detailed sizing & estimation trajectory. The pilot plant equipped with PV modules, a solar pump & controller, an energy recovery device, RO membrane and hydro-pneumatic energy storage was implemented and evaluated in North Jakarta, Indonesia. The results showed that hydro-pneumatic energy storage is a viable and feasible solution for continuous operation of small-scale renewable powered RO desalination systems. Unfortunately the installed system did not have the required storage capacity for 24/7 water production. However with the acquired experience and knowledge, the system behavior is now better understood and can be more easily predicted.Sanitary Engineering Sustainable Energy Technology, Applied SciencesWater ManagementCivil Engineering and Geoscience