Feasibility Study of Solar-Powered Desalination Application in Remote Areas: Case of Indonesia

Abstract

Remote areas usually lack basic clean water services Considering low population poor geographical accessibility and lack of electricity a small-scaled water treatment system capable of producing clean fresh water associated with solar thermal/photovoltaic applications which is characterized with low capital cost easy operation and less need of maintenance is employed in the techno-economic study Indonesia is one of the countries which own a lot of water resources in their territories but have moderate coverage in water basic services As a result it is easy to cause waterborne diseases outbreaks such as diarrhea in Indonesia Three remote villages in islets and three remote villages in inland which reflect the disadvantage areas having clean water services of Indonesia are chosen as the investigated locations in the study There are two scenarios of water demand discussed in the study Scenario 1 considers single-grade water for drinking and food preparing while Scenario 2 considers double-grade water including not only the water demand for drinking and food preparing but also the water demand with less strict quality for bathing which is provided by mixing of the distilled water with the pre-treated water Three available solar distillation technologies including the solar still hybrid solar and Solar Humidification-Dehumidification (HDH) are investigated in the study Both economic analyses in terms of payback period and NPV are employed for the feasibility study Solar still is a feasible technology for most of household-based investment cases under either Scenario 1 or 2 although its yield is the lowest among the three investigated technologies due to the shorter payback period (or higher NPV) In contrast no case with solar HDH for the household-based investment can reach its payback before the system lifetime (assuming 15 years in the study) The performance of hybrid solar is in between these two technologies As far as the community-based investment is concerned solar HDH is preferable among the three investigated technologies due to its shortest payback periods (around 10 and 6 years under Scenario 1 and 2 respectively) or highest positive NPVs The selling water price obtained with hybrid solar has totally no potential to compete with that of the refilled bottle water ($18 15 / m3) adopted in the study

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Keh-Chin Chang (Supervisor)