Experimental investigation of designed solar parabolic concentrator based desalination system for textile industry wastewater treatment

The escalation in demand for textile products increased the use of fresh water and treatment of wastewater; which escalates the search for suitable and energy-efficient technology for wastewater treatment. Solar assisted technology ( i.e. solar desalination) for the textile industry wastewater treatment is proved to be an affordable technology. The only drawback of solar desalination is its low productivity which is the major hindrance in the global acceptance of the system. In the present study, an ingenious improvement in form of a parabolic concentrator-based solar desalination system (PCB-SDS) is designed to overcome low productivity, and the simultaneous use of source textile industry wastewater for its treatment makes this study more realistic. The performance of the designed system was examined for three different brine depths i.e. 20%, 40%, and 60% for two different processing step i.e. Dyeing and Degumming. System performance was evaluated in terms of energetic, exergetic, pollutant removal, and economic analysis. The maximum output of the system was found to be around 7440 and 8330 mL/day on clear sunny days with textile dyeing wastewater (TDyWW) and textile degumming wastewater (TDgWW) at 60% depth respectively. Daily average energy and exergy efficiency of system varies in the range 39.8–51.9 and 3.6–4.8% respectively. The degumming wastewater shows 85% COD removal, whereas, around 90% of TDS and hardness removal was also recorded. The dyeing processed wastewater showed 80% COD removal efficiency, ≅90% TDS, and hardness removal. The cost per liter of distillate output produced from designed PCB-SDS was found to be 0.014 $/L.