Novel design and modeling of a photovoltaic hydro electromagnetic reverse osmosis (PV-HEMRO) desalination system

Reverse osmosis (RO) desalination systems are widely used to provide suitable water for drinking and irrigation especially in countries having an arid climate and receiving low quantities of rain. There are two main difficulties of use of these (RO) desalination systems: the first is the effect of the high salt concentration of feed water which causes membrane scaling and the second is the need for high pressure causing high electrical energy consumption. Therefore, to guarantee optimum operating conditions with the use of advanced control, to ameliorate both the quantity and quality of the product water and to reduce energy consumption, we propose three novel contributions in this paper. The first consists of a design of a photovoltaic hydro electro magnetic reverse osmosis (PV-HEMRO) desalination system. Instead of individual systems (HM and RO) alone as they are described in literature, this new system combines the principle of separating ions by electromagnetic forces and the principle of reverse osmosis by membrane separation. The use of a photovoltaic energy source to feed the system assures a low water product cost. The second consists of the use of an electromagnet instead of a permanent magnet to allow us to vary the magnetic field. The third contribution is the subsequent validation by experimental results of models given in literature. This validation allows us to introduce advanced control and optimization purposes for the desalination process.