Exergy analysis of a seawater reverse osmosis plant

Exergy analysis is a powerful tool to determine how inefficiencies of the processes influence system performance. The exergy analysis of a seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant with 21,000 m³/d of nominal capacity located in Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain) was studied. Once defined, the flow chart of the process, the exergy rate and exergy cost of flows were determined as well as the exergy destruction rate in equipment. The main results indicate that 80% of the exergy destruction is placed on core processes (high pressure pumping and valve regulation, reverse osmosis separation and energy recovery), 29% extra exergy is necessary to obtain the unit of feed exergy from previous stages (seawater pumping and pretreatment) and extra exergy of 1.06 kJ is needed to generate 1 kJ of final product exergy (exergy performance about 50%). In addition, the moderate fluctuations of seawater environmental conditions in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife metropolitan area (and Canary Islands as a whole) establish that environmental parameters present a less important influence on exergy analysis.