Exergy analysis of a solar-powered vacuum membrane distillation unit using two models

A detailed exergy analysis of a solar powered VMD unit was performed using two models: the ideal mixture model and the model using the thermodynamics properties of seawater. The exergy flow rates of process steam, given by the two models differed of about 18%, on average. Despite these differences, the two models agree that during the step of condensation, the most important fraction of exergy was destroyed. Moreover, in this work, two forms of exergy efficiency are calculated. The overall exergy efficiency of the unit with reference to the exergy collected by the solar collector was 3.25% and 2.30% according to Cerci and Sharqawy models, respectively. But, it was 0.182% and 0.128%, when referenced to the exergy of solar radiation, according to Cerci and Sharqawy models, respectively. Besides, the utilitarian exergy efficiency was 9.96%. Since the heat exchanger, the hollow-fiber module and the condenser have a very high exergy performance, then it can be concluded that the enhancement or reduction of exergy losses will be mainly by recovering heat lost in brine discharges and in the rejection of the cooling water. In addition, the influence of the rejection rate on exergy efficiencies was studied.