How to open a sharded MongoDB (without replica set) environment on my dev machine?
You can have one member replica set as a minimum. You will also need config server to keep track of shards. 

Reference: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/core/sharded-cluster-components/#development-configuration


  For testing and development, you can deploy a sharded cluster with a
  minimum number of components. These non-production clusters have the
  following components:
  
  A replica set config server with one member. At least one shard as a
  single-member replica set. One mongos instance.


WARNING:
Use the test cluster architecture for testing and development only.