Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Application for Ultrasonic Desalination System Modeling

Due to the reduction of fresh water resources, increasing population growth, increasing industrial activities and changing people's living standards, water consumption increases consequently and water crisis is rapidly growing around the world, especially in Iran. A variety of desalination systems have been developed and used with their common advantages and disadvantages. High energy consumption is a major problem in most of the desalination systems. Linking desalination systems with ultrasound technology is one of the novel technologies to improve the energy consumption of these systems. In this research, fluid-dynamic simulation of ultrasound desalination system was performed by ANSYSCFX software. The results of numerical simulations were validated with the results of experimental tests. Two types of fluids: hot air entering the system and a mixture of vapor and NaCl were defined as the system inputs in the numerical simulation. Investigating the solutes amount in system's output of the ultrasound desalination system was the aim of this research. It was shown that according the numerical results, the amount of these solutes in the output was approximately 2% of the total primary solutes in the water. It was also concluded that in order to increase the efficiency of the system, the hot air amount entering the system should be decreased. In order to validate the inlet and outlet temperature, fluid containing a mixture of vapor and NaCl was used. The difference in results of the numerical simulation and the experimental tests was just 15%, which indicates that the simulation results are trustful.