A comprehensive techno-economical review of indirect solar desalination

Solar powered desalination has been the focus of great interest recently worldwide. In the past, majority of the experimental investigations focused on solar coupled thermally driven conventional desalination technologies such as Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) and Multi-Effect Distillation (MED). With the advancement in membrane technology and its advantages such as high Recovery Ratios (RR) and low specific energy requirements Reverse Osmosis (RO) desalination has gained popularity. Currently, 52% of the indirect solar desalination plants are RO based with MED and MSF having a 13% and 9% share respectively. Membrane Distillation (MD) based plants represent 16% of the total and have been a focus of recent research efforts. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of all the indirect solar desalination technologies along with plant specific technical details. Efforts assessing the economic feasibility and cost affecting parameters for each desalination technology are also reviewed.