Photovoltaic driven decentralized reverse osmosis plants for brackish water desalination offer a sustainable and low-emission solution for water deficiency problems, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. However, the primary challenge for this combination is how a brackish water reverse osmosis desalination (BWRO) plant based on photovoltaics (PV) can be operated continuously with high energy efficiency. Therefore, this study presents an innovative concept for a BWRO plant operated 24 h/d with a constant drinking water production capacity based on PV and pumped storage as hydraulic energy storage. The latter is used to cover the hydraulic energy consumption of the BWRO process completely or partially in times when the necessary electrical power cannot be provided by the PV plant due to missing solar radiation. During the course of the year, only 2% of the hydraulic energy to be stored in the pumped storage is lost during charging and discharging. The overall efficiency (from PV electricity to used hydraulic energy) of the pumped storage in the investigated innovative system is 78.4%. This value is 2.4% higher than the overall efficiency for a battery system with a high pressure pump in the current designs for BWRO based on PV and battery.

用于苦咸水淡化的光伏驱动分散式反渗透装置为缺水问题提供了可持续和低排放的解决方案，尤其是在干旱和半干旱地区。然而，这种组合的主要挑战是如何以高能效连续运行基于光伏 (PV) 的苦咸水反渗透海水淡化 (BWRO) 工厂。因此，本研究为 BWRO 工厂提出了一个创新概念，该工厂每天 24 小时运行，具有基于 PV 和抽水蓄能作为液压储能的恒定饮用水生产能力。后者用于在光伏电站因缺少太阳辐射而无法提供必要电力时，完​​全或部分覆盖 BWRO 过程的液压能源消耗。在这一年的过程中，抽水蓄能器中储存的液压能只有 2% 在充放电过程中损失。所调查的创新系统中抽水蓄能的整体效率（从光伏电力到使用的液压能）为 78.4%。该值比当前基于光伏和电池的 BWRO 设计中带有高压泵的电池系统的整体效率高 2.4%。