Solar-based desalination systems face problems such as interruptions in the supply of solar energy or insufficient levels of available solar energy due to geographical or weather conditions, which results in a drop in system performance. To overcome this issue, this study proposes a novel concentrating solar-powered flash desalination system with pressure modulation. The objective of this research is to investigate the influence of flow rate and perform energy and exergy analyses for the proposed novel device. The feed flow rate varied in the range of 0.2–1 L/min. The results revealed that the distillate production increases to an optimum as the flow rate is augmented. The highest product water output of 8880 ml/h was observed at a turbulent flow of 0.8 L/min. The brine heater exhibited an average energetic efficiency of 32 %. Additionally, the flash chamber, brine heater, and condenser exhibited average exergy efficiencies of 32.8 %, 4.1 %, and 89.2 %, respectively. The device achieved the lowest energy consumption of 100.8 kWh/m3, the highest gain output ratio of 15.5, and the highest energy utilization factor of 4.8. The present findings will assist engineers and researchers in analyzing the impact of feed rate on renewable energy-based desalination devices.
