Feasibility study of desalination technology utilizing the temperature difference between seawater and inland atmosphere Original Research Article

A new desalination technology named Desalination Pipeline is proposed. The Desalination Pipeline system enables simultaneously desalination and efficient transport of distilled water by applying the working principle of a heat pipe without its liquid recirculation function. The energy source for the operation of the Desalination Pipeline system is the temperature difference between seawater and inland atmosphere. A formulation for the model calculation of the Desalination Pipeline system is established and verified by a laboratory experiment. And then, an estimation of the production and the transportation rates of distilled water is performed on the basis of the existing enviromnental and climate data of two target regions, Sanaʹa, the capital of Republic of Yemen, and El-Quren in Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The estimation result indicates that the Desalination Pipeline system can supply distilled water through one year for some inland area about 100 km apart from the coastal area at a distilled water production rate of 3.2–35.0 L/min (about 10,000 m3/y) for a pipe with a diameter of 2 m, 19–205 L/min (about 60,000 m3/y) for a pipe with a diameter of 4 m. The latter nearly matches the flow rate through a small qanat 60–1500 L/min.