Techno-economic analysis of the impact of working fluids on the concentrated solar power combined with multi-effect distillation (CSP-MED)

Abstract

Concentrated solar power (CSP) is considered a vital option for thermal desalination processes. Furthermore, power generation is an excessive option to be produced. In this work, thermo-economic analysis of the concentrated solar power combined with multi-effect distillation process at different working fluids has been performed. The first configuration is about utilizing the water steam Rankine cycle, while the second configuration is about the organic Rankine cycle (ORC). The main concept is to desalinate seawater and to produce electricity. Parabolic trough collector (PTC) is used as the main source of thermal power collection. Molten salt (MS) working fluid is used for the first configuration, while Therminol-VP1 heat transfer oil is considered for the ORC configuration. Thermo-economic scenarios based on the variation of operating conditions, exergy, and cost analysis are performed to evaluate the proposed system according to the unit product cost, $/GJ, and the hourly cost, $/h. The results reveal that the power generation scenario is thermo-economically effective by generating 100 MWe with 3.5 $/GJ. According to the simulation results, solar ORC configuration gives attractive results against the solar steam Rankine cycle based on thermo-economic product cost (14 vs. 19 $/GJ), total hourly costs (205 vs. 704.5 $/h), power cost (0.027 vs. 0.042 $/kWh), and water price (0.9 vs. 1.12 $/m(3)).