Transient analysis of steam accumulator integrated with solar based MED-TVC system

In a solar field, the steam production rate and pressure is not constant, but varies and becomes maximum at solar noon. However solar thermal applications such as multi effect desalination with thermo vapour compressor (MED-TVC) system are usually designed for a particular pressure and flow rate. Hence a buffer storage system is needed in solar MED-TVC system to adjust the differences between the steam production and the consumption rates. In the present work steam accumulators were used as buffer storage in direct steam generation (DSG) for correcting the mismatch between production and consumption and also for energy storage. A parametric analysis was performed to investigate the impact of steam accumulator volume and also the irradiance disturbance in solar field on MED-TVC system's performance. This paper presents the transient simulation results of the steam accumulator's output and the corresponding output of the MED-TVC yield from 9:00 h to 20:00 h in a day.