Solar Thermal Energy Process Systems
High Performance Flat Plate Collectors
Our patented, High Performance Flat Plate Collector – (HPFPC) generating the solar thermal energy is one of the most energy efficient and economical in cost per square meter on the market today.
RA Heat’s HPFPC is the only flat plate collector on the global market that can be used in the generation of steam.
RA Heat's triple glazed HPFPC uses a full spectrum organic absorber combined with UV protection, ensures a long service life.
The organic absorber can achieve a high solar to thermal conversion efficiency in excess of 90%. This translates to 90% of the solar irradiation being converted into thermal energy.
The organic absorber has been designed to have a 200C stagnation temperature with an optimum operating temperature is 120 - 135C.
The HPFPC system fluid used is water, this eliminates the need for oil based thermal transfer fluids or glycol water mixtures.
Advantages of water are a zero environmental impact, such as fire, spill, leaks, and expensive fluids that need to be purchased, shipped, replaced and disposal.
Thermal Distillation
The Multi Effect Distillation (MED) is a multi-stage process that operates on the principle of reducing the chamber pressure at each successive stage, allowing the feed water to undergo multiple boiling without having to supply additional heat after the first stage.
In this unit, steam is fed into a series of tubes, where it condenses and heats the surface of the tubes and acts as a heat-transfer surface to evaporate saline water on the other side.
The energy used for evaporation of the saline water is the heat of condensation of the steam in the tube. The evaporated saline water is fed into the next, lower-pressure stage where it condenses to fresh-water, while giving up its heat to evaporate a portion of the remaining seawater feed.
'RA Heat' have designed a single solution to solar thermal desalination with the complete design from start till finish.
This system coupled to our HPFPC, Super Heat Generator and Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) crystallizer is capable of treating high or hyper saline water.
Providing a true clean solar thermal energy to environmentally ZLD solution to desalination
This is accomplished using the proven MED technology, with our innovative in-house design, with improved heat transfer of the latent heat into the MED's, giving an increased efficiency for thermal energy transfer.
Super Heat Generator
The patent pending Super Heat Generator (SHG) has been designed to complement RA Heat’s High Performance Flat Plate Collectors (HPFPC). This is coupled to our innovative in-house designed solar thermal Multi Effect Distillation (MED)system thus optimizing the latent heat transfer and resulting in improved efficiency.
Key Benefits:
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Recycling the steam’s latent heat of evaporation, putting this energy back into the system.
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Reduced reliance on Energy. The latent heat of evaporation is approximately 90% of the steam’s energy. The low-temperature steam is put it back into the system as (super-heated) high-temperature steam.
The number of HPFPC's normally needed to produce the required solar thermal energy is reduced by up to 50% and the additional fall through benefits are:
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Reduces the required Solar field piping and power required to circulate the heated fluid.
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Reduced Collector footprint, land area that is needed for the HPFPC solar collectors.
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Resulting in a reduction in CAPEX and OPEX
High-temperature Crystallization process - Zero Liquid Discharge
Discharge of dense brine is defined as water with a salt concentration higher than 50 parts per thousand.
As a result of the desalination process, a dense brine stream is discharged into the environment, which adversely affects flora and fauna of the region, be it inland or at sea. These discharges, when released onto land, increase the salinity of the soil, thus affecting the surrounding fauna. The discharge of brine stream into the sea can cause significant damage to the marine ecosystem
It is in this field, where RA Heat provides solutions with a reduced reliance on power and zero liquid discharge.
By integrating the standard multiple-effect desalination system (MED) technology with a high-temperature desorption process and a high-temperature crystallization process to achieve Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD).
Extracting all the water-vapor volume from the brine slurry of the MED system enables an energy-efficient, ZLD treatment.
This provides a wastewater management strategy that eliminates liquid waste and enhances water usage efficiency.
This can include Industrial wastewater, ground water, RO hypersaline dense brine and Oil & Gas well production water.
The collection of commercial salts in a ZLD system through Sea Water Mining (SWM), using the hydrometallurgy processes is financially viable in recovering Sodium, Magnesium, Potassium, Lithium, and Rubidium
As our environmental awareness and demand for cleaner energy rises, the value of these minerals makes mining the hyper-saline fluid discharge a viable proposition and the extraction cost offset the ZLD and water production costs.