{"id":463579,"date":"2022-12-13T16:38:51","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T19:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=463579"},"modified":"2022-12-13T16:38:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-13T19:38:51","slug":"pilot-plant-generates-electricity-and-water-simultaneously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/pilot-plant-generates-electricity-and-water-simultaneously\/","title":{"rendered":"Pilot plant generates electricity and water simultaneously"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of 20 Brazilian mechanical, chemical, and mechatronic engineers has created an innovative new system capable of simultaneously generating electricity and distilled water. The team of researchers, all from the Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute for Engineering Research and Graduate Studies at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (COPPE\/UFRJ), developed a technology demonstration that recovers the heat wasted by solar panels and reuses it to heat water for a membrane distillation desalinator. This thermal energy can also be used in ambient cooling processes. A prototype was installed at Cidade Universit\u00e1ria, S\u00e3o Paulo, in May this year.<\/p>\n

According to Carolina Palma Naveira-Cotta, a professor on COPPE’s Mechanical Engineering program and leader of the project, the system, called Sustainable Polycogeneration Island, could help decentralize electricity production in Brazil, but its objectives go beyond that. \u201cOur idea is to combine the generation of electricity, water, and other inputs. In our prototype, heat is recovered from high-concentration solar panels and used to produce drinking water,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The technology could potentially be used in locations not connected to the national electricity grid, such as communities in the semiarid Northeast, nearshore oil and gas platforms, islands, conflict zones, and areas suffering from environmental disasters.<\/p>\n

The long name given to the system has a simple explanation. \u201cIt is called an island because of the possibility of decentralized energy generation, produced in isolation; poly refers to its multiple potential uses; cogeneration describes how the inputs are generated together simultaneously; and it is sustainable because the island\u2019s energy process is self-sustainable,\u201d explains Naveira-Cotta, who manages COPPE’s Nano and Microfluidics and Microsystems Laboratory (LabMEMS).<\/p>\n

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Coppe\u2009\/\u2009UFRJ<\/span>Aerial view of the Sustainable Polycogeneration Island, situated in Cidade Universit\u00e1ria at UFRJCoppe\u2009\/\u2009UFRJ<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The demonstration installed at UFRJ occupies an area of 200 square meters (m\u00b2) and is equipped with a high-concentration photovoltaic solar panel capable of generating 5 kilowatts (kW) of electrical energy and 8 kW of thermal energy. It also has three sets of solar collectors for complementary water heating. \u201cSome of the energy from solar radiation is lost, dissipating into the environment in the form of heat during the process of converting solar energy into electricity in the panels. Some of the energy that would otherwise be lost is recovered and used in a secondary process,\u201d says the scientist (see infographic<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe efficiency of commercial solar panels is usually up to around 30%. This means that only a third of the captured solar energy is turned into electricity. The rest is lost in the form of heat,\u201d she says. To recover some of this thermal energy, a system of micro heat exchangers was installed behind the panels. These devices are equipped with microchannels that contain a refrigerant fluid, reclaiming some of the heat that would otherwise be wasted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our demonstration, the recovered heat is used in a secondary water-distillation process that has the potential to produce around 1,000 liters of drinking water per day from salt water,\u201d the researcher explains. This water can be used for human consumption or agro-industrial purposes. \u201cOn sunny days, the heat recovered from the panel is enough to warm up the water to be used in desalination,\u201d she says. \u201cThe collectors complement the water-heating process on cloudy days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jo\u00e3o Alves de Lima, a mechanical engineer from the Center for Alternative and Renewable Energies at the Federal University of Para\u00edba (UFPB), sees COPPE’s initiative as positive and highlights its importance for regions facing water or electricity shortages, but highlights one caveat. \u201cWater production by these thermal processes is still low compared to other desalination technologies,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, the methodology proposed by the UFRJ team can be used with much higher salinities than the traditional desalination method of reverse osmosis.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>

\n \n \n \n <\/picture>Alexandre Affonso<\/span><\/div>
\n

Work on the prototype began in early 2020 and continued during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the idea was first conceived in 2014. Since then, Naveira-Cotta worked with her husband Renato Machado Cotta, who is also a researcher at COPPE\u2019s Mechanical Engineering Department, on several lines of research relating to process intensification, specifically heat and mass transfer. In the industrial sector, process intensification aims to reduce energy expenditure and waste generation from various procedures through the adoption of new methods or technologies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn recent decades, we have studied different methodologies in this field and certain demands have arisen. We worked with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Z\u00fcrich (ETH) on a project similar to the Sustainable Polycogeneration Island, using micro heat exchangers to cool IBM supercomputers and heat buildings,\u201d recalls Cotta. The supercomputers, large enough to occupy entire rooms, were cooled with water that was thus warmed up and used to heat the rest of the building.<\/p>\n

The COPPE project is funded by Sino-Portuguese oil company Petrogal Brasil via the National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels (ANP) and by the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Research and Innovation (EMBRAPII). It has also received investment from the Rio de Janeiro State Research Foundation (FAPERJ), the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES), the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), and the Brazilian Navy.<\/p>\n

Carlos Augusto, director of research, development, and innovation at Petrogal Brasil, highlights the project\u2019s innovative nature. \u201cWe have seen installations and isolated studies on high concentration photovoltaic panels and membrane desalination systems around the world, but the Sustainable Polycogeneration Island is the only one combining these two technologies, reusing thermal energy to cogenerate inputs,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The current challenge for Naveira-Cotta\u2019s team is to scale the project. To this end, the COPPE\/UFRJ scientists plan to test the technology in the semiarid environment of Northeast Brazil or in a large national infrastructure project\u2014places often not supplied with drinking water and electricity. At the same time, they are planning to create a system capable of recovering heat from diesel engines on navy ships to desalinate seawater for consumption by the crew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Technological demonstration uses thermal energy recovered from solar panels","protected":false},"author":690,"featured_media":463581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[169],"tags":[228],"coauthors":[3491],"class_list":["post-463579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-engineering"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/690"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463579"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463597,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463579\/revisions\/463597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463579"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=463579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}