Performance investigation of concentrating solar collectors coupled with a transcritical organic Rankine cycle for power and seawater desalination co-generation Original Research Article

A co-generation system producing electricity and freshwater by a solar field driven supercritical organic Rankine cycle (SORC) coupled with a desalination unit is proposed. The proposed system can use parabolic trough solar collectors (among other options) to produce 700 kW thermal energy with temperatures up to 400 °C at peak conditions. Thermal energy is delivered to the SORC which uses hexamethyldisiloxane (MM) as the working organic fluid and could achieve cycle efficiency close to 21%. The SORC condensation process is undertaken by the feed seawater to reduce thermal pollution. Due to the elevated temperature of the preheated seawater, the RO unit specific energy consumption decreases.