Modeling and simulation of solar chimney/HWT power plant for the assistance of reverse osmosis desalination and electric power generation

The world has currently recognized an essential technical and technological progress that has increased the lifespan of human beings and is one of the results of demographic evolution, which requires meeting the enormous energy and hydraulic needs of the population, especially in areas facing water stress. A novel reverse osmosis membrane desalination system engineering is pre-sented and evaluated, using a Solar Chimney Power Plant (SCPP) and a Horizontal Wind Turbine (HWT). The proposed system is aimed to provide approximately 3,500-10,500 m3/d of freshwater from seawater (salinity ratio = 40,000 ppm) and about 10 MWe of electricity. The freshwater pro-duced is expected to serve around 55,000-100,000 inhabitants in a semi-arid area in Morocco and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Horizontal wind turbine and battery bank will be used as a backup source of power during the sun off periods. In this work, two different case studies that present two different regions are performed (North Africa and the Arabian Gulf regions). The results revealed that the specific power consumption is over 6.181 kWh/m3.