An approach to improve the economy of desalination plants with a nuclear heating reactor by coupling with hybrid technologies

In order to investigate the possible approach to increase thermal efficiency of desalination plants, decrease water production costs and further optimize the coupling design of a nuclear heating reactor (NHR) with the desalination process, the coupling schemes of NHR reactors with hybrid desalination technologies were investigated. The cogeneration operation mode was adopted in this investigation. Two coupling schemes were selected for the cogeneration mode: NHR + low-temperature MED+RO and NHR + low-temperature MED+MED/VC. Technical specifications and economic aspects of the investigation are briefly presented in this paper.