Desalination 435 (2018) 1–2

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Desalination
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/desal

Desalination using renewable energy T

After air, water is the most essential commodity for every living being on the planet earth. Meeting the exponentially growing water demand that
are required to improve the quality of life, and securing sustainable water supply is one of the global challenges of today's scientists and engineers.
With most of the accessible water around us being saline, desalination technology is vital for making freshwater from seawater although it is an
energy intensive technology. Desalination capacity is rapidly increasing worldwide, especially in the Mediterranean and the Gulf region. However,
despite the tremendous technology improvements in the conventional thermal-based and membrane-based desalination processes, its wide use is still
limited to energy-rich countries due to the high energy requirements since they involve high throughput volumes. Presently, these energy re-
quirements are met with the burning of fossil fuels either at power or boiler plants which greatly contribute to global warming and the discharge of
concentrated brine laden with chemicals causes much deterioration of marine environment. Thus, it is essential for engineers and scientists to scout
for alternative processes that are either more energy efficient or utilize low-grade waste heat or renewable energy sources (RES) to meet the growing
demand for desalinated water.
Several countries have realized that they are not going to be protected from the future global energy crisis and have started to set up plans to
diversify their energy resources, mainly using RES such as solar, wind and geothermal energy to desalinate seawater, and development of innovative
energy-efficient desalination technologies. Therefore, it is essential to use alternative energy sources to meet the growing demand for desalination
and being environmentally friendly. Coupling these processes can potentially lead to energy efficient processes with significantly reduced en-
vironmental impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint.
Interestingly, the countries suffering from shortage of drinking water sources have significant amount of RES. Renewable energy technologies are
also rapidly emerging with the promise of economic and environmental viability for desalination. In the last few decades a lot of effort has being
directed in the use of different RES to operate desalination processes. However, the expansion of these efforts towards larger scale plants is hampered
by several techno-economic challenges. In fact, several small scale solar-driven plants have been installed, mainly in remote (off grid) locations, but
some of these plants have failed due to lack of specialised manpower but also due to technological limitations. Recently, several larger-scale plants
have been installed (or are under construction) worldwide. However, most of these solar-driven plants are connected to the grid because the existing
desalination technologies require continuous energy supply for stable operation, which cannot be assured by solar or wind energy alone.
Currently around 1% only of the total desalinated water is based on energy from RES. The limited use of renewable energy can be attributed to
more than one problem such as lack of information, education, training and research. Moreover, the use of expensive energy storage systems, due to
the stochastic nature of RES, usually limits the exploitation of RES. Various methods (experimental to simple calculations) to evaluate the economic
viability of coupling RES with desalination plants are being published. The development of hybrid desalination/renewable energy model is very
complex because of uncertain renewable energy supplies, load demands and large number of parameters. However, the need for such model is
crucial to provide extensive analysis for combining desalination systems with RES.
This special issue therefore sought to collect recent research efforts in exploring the full potential of the use of renewable energy in water
desalination. 25 peer-reviewed manuscripts have been accepted in this issue. The investigations range from detailed experimental to model based
work applied in both thermal and membrane-based desalination processes, including conventional and concepts based on novel ideas. Different types
of renewable energy options have been considered such as the use of ocean waves, LNG cold energy, solar energy, wind energy, thermocline energy,
and geothermal energy. Hybrid approaches have also been explored which would combine different RES such as solar-wind, wind-PV (photovoltaic)-
diesel-battery, steam accumulator-solar, or solar-low-enthalpy geothermal energy using an alternating 12-hour cycle to reduce the probability of
depleting the heat source within the geothermal reservoir and provide the most effective use of RES without the need for energy storage have also
been investigated. Furthermore, emerging desalination technologies, such as membrane distillation, which are more suitable for integrated RES are
reported and compared with conventional technologies, such as PV-RO (reverse osmosis) and supported by experimental and modelling/simulation
results.
Factors influencing the performance and productivity of solar stills, dynamic modelling of the process, design and economic optimisation of a
number of desalination processes and energy storage are also highlighted in a number of contributions.
No doubt, this special issue will be a very valuable benchmark for future investigations on the use of renewable energy in desalination.
Guest editors would like to thank all the authors and co-authors who were highly motivated to contribute to this special issue with their
interesting research. Big thanks also go to our reviewers who spent their valuable time to evaluate the large number of submitted manuscripts. Their
suggestions and comments were very useful to improve the quality of the accepted papers. Guest editors would also like to deeply thank the Editor-
in-Chief, Prof. Nidal Hilal, and the Editorial Team for giving us the opportunity to edit this special issue and for their continuous assistance and

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2018.01.029

Available online 13 February 2018

0011-9164/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 Desalination 435 (2018) 1–2

support from the beginning until successfully publishing this special issue.
We hope readers of this special issue find it interesting and useful for their future research and industry application plans.

⁎
Noreddine Ghaffoura, , Iqbal M. Mujtabab
a
King Abdulla University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Water Desalination and Reuse Centre (WDRC), Biological and Environmental Science and
Engineering Division (BESE), Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia
b
School of Engineering, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK
E-mail address: noreddine.ghaffour@kaust.edu.sa

⁎
Corresponding author.