Efficient Design of a Photovoltaic Water Pumping and Treatment System

Abstract

Through the world, the exploitation of solar energies knew a strong growth these last years. It is interesting to exploit them on the place of consumption, by directly transforming into heat, or in electricity according to needs and especially in remote areas where power from utility is not available or is too costly to install. The use of photovoltaic sources in water pumping and treatment domain is one of the most important renewable energy applications. Having an arid to a semi-arid climate, Tunisia receives low quantities of rain. Consequently, the available water resources in the country are rather modest in terms of both quantity and quality. 97% of water resources in Tunisia are of brackish water, particularly in the south parts of the country. Originate from ground water resources and surface, these waters are unsuitable for drinking or irrigation, because of the high salinity and biological contagion in sensitive (perceptible) germs. The goal of this study is to direct the applied researches to the applications of coupling the photovoltaic energy, which is available in the south of the country and water domain (pumping, desalting and disinfecting). We present in this study some of pilot units coupled to photovoltaic sources and we propose a global system which gathers the water pumping, desalting and disinfecting operations. Some experimental and numerical results have been carried out to show the efficiency of the use of this system. The conception, the realization and the exploitation of this autonomous system will be the suitable solution for providing fresh water to a number of rural regions where important quantities of water are needed to either, the drinking and irrigation, in Tunisia and in the Mediterranean basin in general.