EngiMetric
Energy & Alternative Supply • Treatment process

Solar-Thermal Desalination

Concentrating solar power driving a thermal desalination cycle. Research-to-early-commercial; EngiMetric models no part of it.

Engineering maturity: Research Commercial status: Research

Overview

Concentrating solar power driving a thermal desalination cycle. Research-to-early-commercial; EngiMetric models no part of it.

How it works

Separation mechanism and feed window. As for the underlying thermal cycle, which EngiMetric does not model.

What the process produces. Very low TDS distillate, in principle.

Energy. Solar thermal, at much higher temperature than photovoltaic-coupled RO.

Process sequence

Where this technology normally sits in a treatment train. The steps either side of it are documented in the Library as separate entries.

  1. Solar concentrator
  2. Heat transfer fluid
  3. Thermal desalination cycle
  4. Distillate

Typical applications

  • Research installations
  • Conceptual large solar-thermal plants

Main equipment

  • Heliostat or dish array
  • Receiver and heat transfer loop
  • Thermal desalination plant

Key design parameters

The parameters an engineer actually sets, and why each one drives the design. EngiMetric does not assume any of them.

Parameter Why it matters
Optical efficiency Sets the useful heat collected.
Receiver temperature Sets the cycle that can be run.
Storage Decides whether the plant runs at night.

Advantages

  • Stores solar energy thermally, which is easier than storing electricity.

Limitations

  • Capital cost and land use are very high.
  • Not competitive at ordinary scales today.

Engineering considerations

  • EngiMetric provides no solar-thermal or thermal-cycle figure. Nothing quantitative on this page comes from this platform.

Status and EngiMetric support

Industry maturity and commercial status describe the technology itself. EngiMetric support and quantitative modeling describe what this platform does with it — and those two are read from the engineering registry at build time, so they cannot drift from the code.

Engineering maturity
Research How established the technology is in the industry. Not an EngiMetric claim.
Commercial status
Research Where the technology sits in the market. Not an EngiMetric claim.
EngiMetric support
Research No execution-registry entry exists, so no support is claimed.
Design engine
No Whether the Plant Designer can carry this as a configured process step.
Quantitative modeling
Not quantitatively modeled No engine exists, so EngiMetric states no figure for this technology.

Not quantitatively modeled. EngiMetric publishes no energy, recovery, flux, capacity or cost figure for this technology. Every quantitative statement on this page comes from your own inputs or from an external source, never from a calculation on this platform.

Because no EngiMetric engine exists for Solar-Thermal Desalination, this page deliberately contains no calculated figures. Any energy, recovery, flux or capacity value you need must come from a supplier, a published plant or your own analysis.