Hybrid Cooling–Desalination Systems for Water–Energy Co-Production: Architectures, Integration Strategies, Performance Metrics, and Research Needs

Abstract

Cooling and desalination increasingly co-locate in arid coastal regions, creating an opportunity for hybrid systems that co-produce chilled water (or conditioned air) and freshwater while improving total resource utilization. This review surveys hybrid cooling–desalination architectures including absorption cooling integrated with thermal desalination or membrane distillation, adsorption desalination cycles that inherently co-generate cooling and freshwater, seawater air conditioning coupled with reverse osmosis, and solar-assisted multigeneration configurations. The synthesis emphasizes integration mechanisms such as heat cascading from chillers to desalination modules, shared heat rejection, coupling through seawater intake and brine management, and operational coordination under variable ambient conditions. Performance metrics are harmonized across studies using specific electricity consumption, gain-output ratio, cooling COP, exergy efficiency, and water–energy productivity indicators, with attention to constraints like scaling/fouling, intake temperature, and environmental discharge. Recent reviews on synergistic desalination/cooling and on hybrid membrane–thermal desalination underscore both near-term integration benefits and the need for robust, validated designs that can be deployed at scale.