Sustainable Water and Energy Production with Medium-Scale Concentrated Solar Power Plant Coupled with Desalination: A Modeling Study with Lca Analysis

Since carbon-based fuels and freshwater sources are depleting rapidly, alternative renewable energy and water resources must be used for the growing world’s demand. In Northern Cyprus Island, about 70% of the water supply of the region comes from abroad via a pipeline, and the electricity is produced by burning fuel oil that places a high burden on the environment. As an alternative solution, a concentrating solar power plant using parabolic trough collectors coupled with desalination was designed for a selected area in the island for this study. Evaluation of the design was conducted by analyzing the performance by estimating the hourly thermal and electrical energy production and by LCA considering cradle to gate analysis. The results show that the proposed system could provide all the electrical demand and about 78% of the domestic water demand of the campus. LCA of the system revealed that electricity production from fuel oil, chemical usage (mainly phosphoric acid), and brine release to ocean are the system’s main environmental burdens. Overall results suggest that hybrid systems could be an alternative and sustainable approach for future water and electricity demand in regions where sufficient saline water and solar resources are present.