Integrating hybrid systems with existing thermal desalinationplants

In Gulf countries, most power plants are co-generation power desalting plants (CPDP) that generate electric energy and also produce fresh water through the desalination of seawater. This paper provides detailed technical and economical analyses to evaluate a new generation of dual purpose technology that includes the integration of reverse osmosis (RO) processes with existing thermal desalination processes and power generation (triple hybrid system) at Layyah plant, Sharjah, UAE. Hybridization of sweater reverse osmosis (SWRO) and the multi-stage flash (MSF) technology was considered to improve the performance of latter and reduce the cost of the produced water. Moreover, “idle” power in winter (seasonal surplus of unused power) was mainly utilized by RO to further reduce the cost of the hybrid system for six months of the year. Spinning reserve was also used to further reduce the cost of the proposed hybrid system. Integration ofthe three processes of MSF, MED, and RO desalination technologies could be made at different levels through which the resulting of water cost will depend on the selected configuration and the cost of materials of construction, equipment, membrane, energy, etc. Thus, the capital and annual operating costs were calculated for all potential alternatives for various plant capacities. It was found that for all plant capacities, integrated hybrid systems resulted in most cost effective solution. For example, at a capacity of 50 MIGD, the present worth of the cost was calculated to be 588.7, 443.2, and 380 million US$ for MSF, MED, and hybrid RO systems, respectively.     

脱盐过程的比较和选择

本文简要介绍世界上三种主要海水淡化方法一多级闪蒸、低温多效蒸馏和反渗透的原理、特点和方法选择。将这三种方法进行比较并结合实践对选择海水淡化方法的依据进行探讨。预计21世纪的海水淡化市场会有更大发展。     

Seawater desalination by reverse osmosis : Plant design,performance data,operation and maintenance (Tanajib,Arabian Gulf Coast)

A systematic interpretation of critical combinations of feed water, pretreatment and membranes and adequate conclusions can avoid setbacks of reverse osmosis processes. Reputed systems manufacturers will find the right approach if their tasks will be changed from a limited responsibility — for design, construction, installation and commissioning only — to an overall responsibility which includes operation and maintenance.In 1982/83 Preussag received from Aramco in Saudi Arabia the order for the first temporary reverse osmosis seawater desalination plant at Tanajib, Arabian Gulf Coast, with a total net capacity of 600,000 gpd. The orders were placed on a turnkey basis including operation and maintenance.The highlights of the RO seawater desalination plant are: shallow beach wells, ultrafiltration, vacuum deaeration, high-pressure multi-stage centrifugal pumps with energy recovery turbine, single stage reverse osmosis and free programmable logic and process controller.During the first more than one and a half years of operation, product quantity and quality has always met the requirements of Aramco's specification. The excellent experiences until today with the first temporary Tanajib reverse osmosis seawater desalination plant permit the conclusion that RO technology can avoid major setbacks and may face the competition with the distillation processes with confidence.     

Energy advantages of reverse osmosis in seawater desalination

The very rapid increase in energy costs during the past three years is causing a change in the preferred process technology for seawater desalination. The phase changes, evaporation, and condensation, required in the distillation processes make them more energy intensive than the ambient temperature liquid separation that occurs in the reverse osmosis (RO) process. This paper describes the RO process and how to calculate its energy consultation.The RO process requires only 5–7 KWh/m³ of product water compared to 15–16 KWh/m³ required by the most efficient distillation process. The productivity of a large dual purpose electricity/RO water plant is compared to the productivity of a commercially purchased state-of-the-art dual purpose electric/distillation water plant that is currently under construction. The RO potable water productivity is about 2X the distillate flow at the same fuel rate     

Membrane processes for water supply and reuse - a question of energy consumption and cost

This paper is limited primarily to reverse osmosis which is the dominating membrane process in commercial plants. Desalination of brackish water and seawater with reverse osmosis, with special emphasis on costs and energy consumption, is the primary subject discussed in the paper. Some aspects of and development trends in industrial and domestic applications of membrane processes are also taken up, particularly with regard to by-product recovery and water reuse in connection with advanced wastewater treatment.The first RO plant to be brought into operation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is located at Salbukh. The investment and total operation costs for this plant have been calculated in the paper. The water cost is at least twice as high as in a continental U.S. location. The main reason for this is the very high cost of civil and local works in Saudi Arabia. A similar calculation has been made for RO seawater desalination.Increased energy costs during the last decade have directed research and development work for all desalination methods towards reducing energy consumption. It is shown in the paper that energy recovery in connection with RO seawater desalination is particularly feasible. Different methods for energy recovery have been investigated and reported, the preferred methods depending on the size of the RO plant. A large underground RO plant for energy recovery, based on utilization of the static pressure instead of high pressure pumps, has also been studied.Another possible energy-saving, but also water quality improving method has been proposed, viz . a combined MSF-RO dual purpose plant. Excess power for reverse osmosis seems to be more and more available in Saudi Arabia due to the high power/water ratio in MSF dual purpose plants compared to the real demand for power and water.     

Performance study of water desalination methods in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is an arid desert country without rivers or sweet water lakes, however, it does have vast amount of groundwater and seawater. In order to make these waters suitable for human consumption and industrial use, most of their salts must be removed by some means. The desalination methods most frequently used in the Kingdom are: Multistage flash (MSF) evaporation, reverse osmosis (RO), and electrodialysis (ED).During the last decade, we have witnessed a spectacular growth of desalination plants. This growth is expected to continue in the next decade. The present production capacity of all desalting plants in Saudi Arabia is estimated to be 750,000 m³/day; this figure will be most likely tripled in the next five years.This paper is a report on a performance study of the most significant desalination plants in the Kingdom. The plants, which include MSF and seawater and brackish water RO plants, were selected either because of their size or their importance to the desalination technology. The plants are briefly described and their performances are discussed.     

高回收率反渗透海水淡化工艺

目前反渗透海水淡化的回收率小于40％。本文研究开发死端超滤预处理技术和反渗透一纳滤联合脱盐相结合的膜集成海水淡化新工艺,与传统工艺比较,具有装置体积小,产水回收率高等优点。文章介绍了采用新工艺的海水淡化装置样机的试制情况及现场运行结果。沿岸海水为料液,操作压力1为5．1MPa条件下,操作压力2为2.0MPa条件下,装置脱盐率99．21％,产水量3971.3L/h,产水回收率55％。海水淡化装置对海水中Ca^2 、Mg^2 、Na^ 、HCO3^-、Cl^-、SO4^2-、TDS,总碱度,总硬度的脱除率分别为99％,99．6％,99．21％,95％,99．35％,98．48％,99.21％,95％,99．42％。     

用海水淡化法解决海岛用水

我国多数海岛属于资源性缺水,解决用水困难的途径有两条,海底管道从大陆调水和海水淡化就地制水。文章详细分析了影响反渗透海水淡化成本的诸因素,对不同生产容量反渗透海水淡化工厂的投资及生产成本进行了预测。针对舟山某岛群的地理条件对海底管道引水和就地海水淡化制水进行了综合比较。最后提出解决该岛用水短缺的可行方案。     

考虑水需求的水电联产海水淡化系统的优化设计

水电联产不仅能缓解淡水资源不足的问题,而且可有效降低能耗和淡化成本。建立了水电联产系统数学模型,将优化设计描述为一个混合整数非线性规划(MINLP)问题,并采用混合编码的遗传算法进行求解,结果表明,以水定电模式下水电联产系统最优操作模式为发电、多级闪蒸(MSF)和反渗透(RO)三者的集成,且MSF和RO的产水比存在最优值,发电采用背压式蒸汽轮机。随着淡水需求量的增加,联产系统的淡水成本逐渐降低,MSF与RO的产水比呈现出逐渐降低的趋势。     

Solar thermal desalination technologies

The use of solar energy in thermal desalination processes is one of the most promising applications of the renewable energies. Solar desalination can either be direct; use solar energy to produce distillate directly in the solar collector, or indirect; combining conventional desalination techniques, such as multistage flash desalination (MSF), vapor compression (VC), reverse osmosis (RO), membrane distillation (MD) and electrodialysis, with solar collectors for heat generation. Direct solar desalination compared with the indirect technologies requires large land areas and has a relatively low productivity. It is however competitive to the indirect desalination plants in small-scale production due to its relatively low cost and simplicity. This paper describes several desalination technologies in commercial and pilot stages of development. The primary focus is on those technologies suitable for use in remote areas, especially those which could be integrated into solar thermal energy systems.     

Coupling of nuclear heating reactor with desalination process

A seawater desalination plant using a nuclear heating reactor (NHR) coupled with the multi-effect distillation (MED) process was developed by the Institute of Nuclear Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, China. The seawater desalination plant was designed to supply potable water demand to some coastal location or island where both fresh water and energy sources are severely lacking. The NHR design possesses intrinsic and passive safety features, which was demonstrated by the NHR-5 experiences. The intermediate circuit and steam circuit were designed as the safety barriers between the NHR and MED desalination systems. With the power range of the heating reactor within 10 to 200 MWt, the desalination plant could provide 8,000 to 160,000 m³/d of potable water of appropriate quality. The design concept and parameters, safety features, and comparative investigation of coupling schemes are presented in the paper.     

压力交换式能量回收器在反渗透海水淡化技术中的应用

在反渗透海水淡化系统中，高压系统中采用压力交换式能量回收器，大大地降低海水淡化的能耗。压力交换式能量回收器的能量回收效率达到95％以上，本文从其工作原理和反渗透海水淡化设计上阐述其应用的优点。     

冷冻-重力脱盐与反渗透结合的海水淡化分析研究

随着我国沿海液化天然气(LNG)接收站的迅速发展,LNG冷能有望成为冷冻法海水淡化的低成本冷源。在此前提下,研究了人工海冰在不同融化率下的重力脱盐效果,结果表明,当融化率达到79.53%时,Cl-、TDS、总硬度这3项指标可达到饮用水标准。当融化率为39.81%时,将冷冻-重力脱盐产水作为反渗透系统进水的运行模式,相较单纯冷冻-重力脱盐模式,饮用水产水率由20.47%上升到45.1%;相较直接将原海水进行反渗透处理,水泵吨水能耗从3.39 kW·h下降到0.87 kW·h。     

热膜耦合海水淡化系统的优化设计

采用混合节点和分配节点的概念,建立了多级闪蒸(MSF)和反渗透(RO)海水淡化集成系统的超结构模型,以年度总费用最小为目标,引入产水比的概念,并将该参数作为集成系统的一个优化变量,采用改进的遗传算法进行求解,获得了集成系统的最优结构及相应的操作条件。实例结果表明:集成海水淡化系统的淡水成本比独立运行的RO和MSF低,产水比为0.45时集成系统的费用最小,流程结构为MSF-RO。     

集成膜工艺海水淡化与浓海水综合利用

综述了反渗透一电渗析集成工艺海水淡化与浓缩水综合利用研发现状与发展趋势。指出具有特殊分离功能的离子交换膜电渗析技术是高度分离、富集海洋化学元素的关键技术。提出了目前需要研究的几个问题。     

海水纳滤预处理的优化研究

纳滤已被广泛研究用于反渗透和膜蒸馏海水淡化的预处理,它能有效避免反渗透膜和膜蒸馏装置的结垢污染,但纳滤膜同样存在结垢污染问题。通过配制人工海水及人工脱硬海水等海水体系研究了硬度离子对纳滤膜无机污染的影响,并通过接触角、SEM、EDX等表征方法研究了膜面污染物的主要成分及其对膜性能的影响。结果表明,钙离子是造成纳滤膜无机污染的主要硬度离子,脱硬或脱钙处理能有效避免海水淡化过程中纳滤预处理阶段的无机结垢问题。     

Conceptual design of a novel hybrid fuel cell/desalination system

A novel concept for integrating fuel cells with desalination systems is proposed and investigated in this work. Two unique case studies are discussed — the first involving a hybrid system with a reverse osmosis (RO) unit and the second — integrating with a thermal desalination process such as multi-stage flash (MSF). The underlying motivation for this system integration is that the exhaust gas from a hybrid power plant (fuel cell/turbine system) contains considerable amount of thermal energy, which may be utilized for desalination units. This exhaust heat can be suitably used for preheating the feed in desalination processes such as reverse osmosis which not only increases the potable water production, but also decreases the relative energy consumption by approximately 8% when there is an increase of just 8°C rise in temperature. Additionally, an attractive hybrid system application which combines power generation at 70%+ system efficiency with efficient waste heat utilization is thermal desalination. In this work, it is shown that the system efficiency can be raised appreciably when a high-temperature fuel cell co-generates DC power in-situ with waste heat suitable for MSF. Results indicate that such hybrid system could show a 5.6% increase in global efficiency. Such combined hybrid systems have overall system efficiencies (second-law base) exceeding those of either fuel-cell power plants or traditional desalination plants.     

RO,MSF and VTE/VC Desalination: A comparative evaluation

For sea water conversion in single-purpose plants, reverse osmosis (RO) is shown to be more economical than multistage flash (MSF) desalination over a wide range of unit size and fuel cost. Attention is focussed on vertical tube evaporation/vapor compression (VTE/VC) a self-contained, low-energy consuming thermal process which is potentially competitive with RO.     

Recent advances in polymer and polymer composite membranes for reverse and forward osmosis processes

Semipermeable membranes are the core elements for membrane water desalination technologies such as commercial reverse osmosis (RO) process and emerging forward osmosis (FO) process. Structural and chemical properties of the semipermeable membranes determine water flux, salt rejection, fouling resistance, and chemical stability, which greatly impact energy consumption and costs in osmosis separation processes. In recent years, significant progress has been made in the development of high-performance polymer and polymer composite membranes for desalination applications. This paper reviews recent advances in different polymer-based RO and FO desalination membranes in terms of materials and strategies developed for improving properties and performances.