Research Of Ocean Thermal Energy Desalination On Thermodynamics And Driving Force

Energy and water problems might be the biggest challenges the world faces in the21th century. Desalination is one of the effective ways to solve the lack of freshwater resources. However, the current desalination technology is of high input, high energy consumption, and high cost. Therefore it is important to develop new clean energies for desalination and ocean thermal energy is a good choice with abundant reserves and low cost. The utilization of ocean thermal energy in desalination can save considerable fossil energy and reduce the energy consumption and the cost of seawater desalination. As little domestic or international research has been done in this field currently, this paper studies the ocean thermal energy desalination (OTED) technology.The research contents in this paper mainly include three aspects:1. A new model of siphon ocean thermal energy desalination technology is established. With the help of the software ASPEN PLUS, the model is numerically analyzed. Based on the process simulation model, the relationship of some important parameters, including seawater temperature, the flash temperature etc., are studied to provide basis for the design of experimental platform. Meanwhile, the simulation calculation results are analyzed to find out the pressure difference between flash evaporator and condenser under which indicates the power of the constant operation of the desalination system.2. A thermodynamics model is established to analyze the thermal efficiency of the desalination system. The thermodynamics analysis consists of three aspects, thermal load, exergy and temperature-difference function. The calculated results are analyzed to find out how to achieve the best thermal efficiency of the system.3. Experimental system is designed and built, and the experimental results are measured and analyzed. The work of design and building includes the design and selection of the experiment equipment and site commissioning of the platform. According to the experimental data, two analysis are done about the effectiveness of the experiment and the relationship between the system’s driving force and other important parameters like the flash temperature. The experimental data are also compared with the theoretical results to find the reason of errors and give solutions to the possible related problems.This paper analyzes the ocean thermal energy desalination system both theoretically and experimentally. The feasibility and operation power of the ocean thermal energy desalination are verified from the theory and experiment. Meanwhile, the theory and experiment results of this paper have also laid a solid foundation for the further development of ocean thermal energy desalination.