Sustainable freshwater production through Al 2 O 3 nano‐enhanced phase change material‐assisted solar desalination: Energy, exergy, and environmental assessment

The present research aims to improve the environmental and thermodynamic efficiency of a solar desalination system using Al 2 O 3 nano‐enhanced phase change material (nano‐PCM). Five different system configurations were experimentally investigated, including a conventional system, PCM system and nano‐PCM systems with different Al 2 O 3 concentration (0.1–0.5 wt%). Energy and exergy analyses were used to assess the system, and artificial neural networks (ANN) and response surface methodology (RSM) for modeling and optimization. The results indicate that the performance of the optimized nano‐PCM system significantly improved the performance of the system, by achieving a 53% relative improvement in freshwater productivity and a nearly 80% relative improvement in the exergy efficiency of the system compared to the conventional system. The entropy generation reduced about 25–30%, which shows that there is a substantial decrease in the irreversibility of the system. Environmentally, the system was capable of reducing CO 2 emissions by roughly 275 kg per year, highlighting its potential for sustainable and eco‐friendly desalination. The results verify that the integration of nano‐PCM and multi‐objective optimization is a sustainable approach to enhance the performance of solar desalination systems.