Research Abstracts

Although Germany is not considered a water-poor country, rainwater utilisation in households became widespread since the 1980s. Today, about 50,000 professional rainwater plants are being installed every year mostly in new one-family houses. These plants collect exclusively water from the roof which

Recent advances in solar-cell technology and membrane-separation technology do promise the economic viability of distributed seawater and brackish-water solar desalting systems in the near future. Reverse osmosis desalting processes driven by photovoltaic solar electricity can have the potential of

The MSF process has covered in the last years more than 50% of world production of desalinated water from the sea. Although this process has been used for several decades, the large energy requirements force to search for new and feasible ways to improve the overall thermal efficiency. Few studies h

In membrane based gas separation, crosslinking of membrane materials was shown to be an effective method to stabilize the polymer structure against undesirable plasticization effects. In this study a crosslinkable copolyimide was synthesized by using the dianhydride 6FDA (4,4N-(hexafluoroisopropylid

This work developed a new treatment system, which could effectively reduce silica in heavy oil produced wastewater to the acceptable levels in the reused boiler at the Xinjiang oilfield. With this treatment system, the harmfulness of silicate scale to the steam boiler run could be reduced in the pro

The comparative performance of three pilot-scale anaerobic sequencing batch reactors treating domestic sewage from the University of Sao Paulo (Sao Carlos City, Brazil) was evaluated. Physical, chemical and physicochemical variables were accessed in the influent and in the effluent for performance e

A detailed analysis of low power (100 kW) solar-driven Rankine cycles in the medium temperature range has been carried out. Toluene, octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (D4) and hexamethyldisiloxane (MM) has been considered as working fluids of organic Rankine cycle (ORC). Direct solar vapor generation con

This paper presents a preliminary design for a solar thermal-powered reverse osmosis desalination system. The high pressure pump in the seawater reverse osmosis unit requires a 95-kW input, while the reject energy is recovered by way of pressure exchangers. The unit’s specific energy consumption is

Experience in combining solar thermal and seawater or brackish water reverse osmosis (RO) desalination technologies is very limited. Two SOFRETES systems were in operation in the early 1980s for brackish water desalination. Only such two implementations involving a single design can be cited, along

This paper deals with the application of parabolic trough solar collectors to a double cascade of organic Rankine cycles for reverse osmosis desalination. Two different solar collectors are operated either with thermal oil or with the organic fluid of the top cycle. The solar thermal system drives a