Abstract The freeze-melting process can be a viable method for the purposes of desalination because of its low energy consumption, ignorable corrosion issues, and without huge pressure or membrane replacement work. Large contact area for heat and mass transfer per unit mass of water between the water and air and low heat resistance results in higher energy efficiency during spray freezing desalination process compared to other freezing desalination methods. A 200 m high desalination tower was proposed in this paper that could generate 27.7 kg/s fresh water in the form of water droplets with 2 mm diameter at an atmospheric temperature of −26°C. This research has founded that the natural convective airflow induced by the heat released by the warm water in the freezing process could generate through the wind turbine mounted in this system approximately one-third of the energy consumed by the water pump of the system. This free energy has never been studied in previous research. The power consumption required to produce 1 m3 fresh water in this system is approximately 1.07 kWh. Compared to traditional desalination methods, the power consumption of our new spray freezing desalination system is much lower than previous systems with the same mass flow rate of fresh water. Only 375.4 kJ cold energy to produce one-kilogram fresh water. Thus, this spray freezing desalination system could be employed in desalination industry if free cold energy (e.g. from the cold atmosphere or the regasification process of LNG) and seawater resources are available.

中文翻译：

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在自然通风塔中通过喷雾冷冻来淡化海水

摘要 冻融工艺能耗低、腐蚀问题可忽略不计，且无需巨大压力或换膜工作，是一种可行的海水淡化方法。与其他冷冻脱盐方法相比，水和空气之间单位质量水的传热传质接触面积大，热阻低，因此在喷雾冷冻脱盐过程中能效更高。本文提出了一个 200 m 高的海水淡化塔，在 -26°C 的大气温度下，可以产生 27.7 kg/s 的直径为 2 mm 的水滴形式的淡水。这项研究发现，在冷冻过程中温水释放的热量引起的自然对流气流可以通过安装在该系统中的风力涡轮机产生，约占系统水泵消耗的能量的三分之一。在以前的研究中从未研究过这种自由能。在该系统中生产 1 立方米淡水所需的电力消耗约为 1.07 千瓦时。与传统的海水淡化方法相比，我们的新型喷雾冷冻海水淡化系统的功耗远低于以前相同质量流量的淡水系统。生产一公斤淡水仅需375.4 kJ冷能。因此，这种喷雾冷冻海水淡化系统可用于海水淡化行业，如果没有冷能（例如