| Issue |
E3S Web Conf.
Volume 680, 2025
The 4th International Conference on Energy and Green Computing (ICEGC’2025)
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 00031 | |
| Number of page(s) | 15 | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202568000031 | |
| Published online | 19 December 2025 | |
Comparative Analysis of Desalination Technologies: Energy Performance and Renewable Energy Integration with Focus on Reverse Osmosis Systems
1 Hassan First University, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, EMIT Laboratory, Settat, Morocco
2 Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique et Technique (CNRST), Rabat, Morocco
* Corresponding author: fadoua.loirdighi.doc@uhp.ac.ma
Faced with the scarcity of freshwater resources, desalination represents a strategic solution to meet the growing water needs. This article presents a comparative analysis of the main desalination technologies: membrane processes (reverse osmosis, electrodialysis) and thermal processes (multi-stage flash distillation MSF, multi-effect distillation MED). Reverse osmosis dominates with 69% of the global capacity, thanks to its low energy consumption (3-6 kWh/m³) and its competitive cost ($0.45-1.72/m³) compared to thermal processes (up to 25.5 kWh/m³). The study examines the couplings with renewable energies: photovoltaic systems (2.5 kWhel/m³, <2 $/m³), wind (2.8 kWh/m³), and solar thermal with organic Rankine cycles (2.35 kWhmec/m³, 0.6 $/m³). The results show that reverse osmosis coupled with renewable energies offers promising performance for sustainable desalination.
Key words: Desalination / Reverse osmosis / Renewable energies / Energy efficiency
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2025
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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