Modeling and design of heat exchangers in a solar-multi effect distillation plant

The provision of fresh water is becoming an increasingly important issue in the world, in arid and semi-arid regions, as southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Central Asian countries and several areas in North and South America. The water demand is linked to rapid population growth, pollution problems, climate change and the frequency of drought periods. As a consequence, more and more interest is paid to thermal desalination processes of seawater coupled with renewable energy such as solar energy. In this paper, the modeling and design of the heat exchangers in a multi-effect distillation (MED) desalination plant using thermal solar energy is presented and analyzed, specifically we focused our interest in shell and tube heat exchangers. We compared the heat transfer coefficients (HTC) found using the correlations of Bell method for Single phase, Kandlikar for Boiling correlations, Kutateladze for Condensation correlations with those present in previous experimental work for each mechanisms in MED plant. The results show the reliability of the design and that they are in good agreement with the values of previous experimental works.