Use of Concentrated Solar Thermal Energy Systems to Enhance Sea Salt Production in Southern Spain

This study describes a simulation analysis to asses increased productivity of salterns used for sea salt production by implementing a solar parabolic trough collector to accelerate the evaporation process. The proposed system is designed for Southern Spain, to be coupled with a heat exchanger submerged in the saltern’s channel. A thermal-fluid analysis of the proposed system was modeled using Engineering Equation Solver (EES) to replicate the heat and mass transfer behavior of the system. Results provided through the simulation model show that the added heat increases the pond solution layer temperature, thereby increasing the evaporation rate and the sea salt production rate.