For CSP plants, water consumption is undergoing increasing scrutiny particularly in dry and arid regions with water scarcity conditions. Significant amount of water has to be used for parabolic trough mirror cleaning to maintain high mirror reflectance and optical efficiency in sandy environments. For this specific purpose, solar collectors are washed once or twice every week and about 5 million gallons of demineralized water is utilized every year without further recovery. The produced waste water from a CSP plant contains the soiling i.e. accumulated dust and some amount of organic contaminants, as indicated by our analysis of waste water samples from the solar field.
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