Articles techniques et présentations

Brine disposal from desalination plants placed in inland areas far from sea is an important problem. Evaporation ponds can be used for reducing the waste to solid state but they require huge amounts of land. Evaporation using arrays of wet surfaces can minimize the land requirements. One characteristic of the methods based on natural evaporation is the uncertainty associated to the influent variables (wind velocity, temperature and relative humidity) on the water evaporation rate. To the aim of obtaining the performance of an experimental evaporation unit under random environmental conditions we have developed a model using COMSOL Multiphysics and then adjusted the mass transfer coefficient to experimental results. The uncertainty limits for the operation were obtained by a procedure based on the Monte Carlo method.