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Abstract
While the fuel cost has increased in the past years, the desalinated water demand has also increased sharply,
especially in the deserted areas. The challenge is to be able to meet such future demand, minimizing the water
production costs. The desalination concepts have evolved, achieving substantial progress: desalination thermal
process is moving from MSF to MED, hybrids involving both thermal and membrane process are more and more
implemented. Reduction in cost and the improved economics of desalination plants are essential elements for the
development of communities. Energy, capital, and operating costs are key issues of water desalination economics.
This will lead to an optimized process selection on a case by case approach: the choice will depend on the specific
conditions prevailing on site, such as existing facilities, power and water demand increase, land availability, raw
water quality, quality of water to be produced, ratio between power and water production, ratio between thermal and
membrane desalination. The presentation will focus on these various aspects of seawater desalination economics.
Keywords: Thermal desalination; Membrane desalination; Hybrids; Water cost; Power to water ratio; Optimization
1. Introduction
Water is a precious commodity. One of the
most challenging situation the desalination
community is facing today is how to be able to
*Corresponding author.
Presented at the EuroMed 2002 conference on Desalination Strategies in South Mediterranean Countries:
Cooperation between Mediterranean Countries of Europe and the Southern Rim of the Mediterranean.
Sponsored by the European Desalination Society and Alexandria University Desalination Studies and Technology
Center, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, May 46, 2002.
0011-9164/02/$ See front matter 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
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Early RO plants were developed for the treatment of brackish water and the membranes were
not suitable for use on seawater. Since the early
days, the membranes have been improved in terms
of TDS, productivity, resistance to higher pressure
as well as higher temperature and they are now in
use in seawater RO (SWRO) plants in the Middle
East and elsewhere.
More than ever, the RO process requires good
quality feed water to be successful. The membranes
are very sensitive to suspended solids, certain
chemicals, pollution and biological fouling.
In order to maintain the membranes in good
order and to give them reasonable life, better pretreatments are needed and great care is required
from the operators to ensure that the water chemistry
requirements of the plant are adhered to.
Additional progress has been made by using
deep seawater intakes, improved pre-treatment as
well as better skill operators.
3. Improvement in the processes efficiency
For large units plants (unit size >5 MIGD) the
MSF process is generally implemented for thermal
desalination application, being well proven and
reliable. Considering the process aspects of large
MSF units (size in the range of 10 to 15 MIGD),
there is still some room for optimization in various
fields, such as:
Fouling factors
Wear load
Seawater re-circulation system
Vacuum system
For smaller thermal desalination plants (unit
size up to 5 MIGD), the MED process has made
substantial progress. With the selection of adequate
materials, it allows performant heat transfer rates
with acceptable scaling which can be further
improved by the addition of antiscale chemicals
and the control of top brine temperatures below
70C. In order to improve the thermal efficiency
and reduce the number of cells required, vapor
compression is used. This is where some of the
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The excess of electricity produced by an integrated power and thermal process desalination
plant will be exported on the grid and a selling
price will be attached to it.
However the corresponding fuel consumption
has also a price, which has to be taken into account,
when making the overall balance.
5.4. Chemicals
The chemicals are required to operate desalination plants, whatever the process envisaged.
Based on the salt water analysis and on the
desired product water quality from MSF, MED
and/or RO plant, comparison of cost between
chemicals used has to be performed. For thermal
desalination, such as MSF or MED, various
chemicals are used to operate the distiller itself
and the post-treatment of the product water. As
far as RO desalination is concerned, chemicals are
mainly used in the pre-treatment of the raw water.
5.5. Personnel costs
Labor is required to operate and monitor the
plant; whatever is the type of the plant. However,
the complexity of the plant, such as including RO
pretreatment, hybrids as well as integrated power
and desalination requires additional qualification
of the personnel, which is influencing the total
cost. Personnel costs are thus process related.
5.6. Maintenance and overhaul
Maintenance and overhaul shall be determined
in order to ascertain the total cost of the product
water. These costs include materials, supplies and
labor. More specifically for RO plants, the performance of the membranes are degrading over
the time and, subject to the utilization of the plant,
membrane replacement costs are significant over
the lifetime of such processes.
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installed upstream of existing distillation facilities will increase the total product water output?
Is it worth using existing wells to blend their
water with the product water obtained from
new seawater desalination plants?
6.1.4. Power and water demand increase
Power and water demand increase can vary
significantly from a country to another if not from
region to region. A strong water demand increase
coupled with a stable electricity demand will favor
the installation of RO processes.
When both the power and water demand are
increasing, the key issue is the relative power
demand increase compared to the water demand
increase, which will impact the design and the
concept of the integrated power and desalination
systems.
The same applies when the water demand is
steady during the year whereas there is a drastic
difference in the power demand between the
summer season and the winter time.
6.1.5. Ratio between power and water production
Typical power to water ratios (PWR) are listed
here below for various technologies:
PWR
Backpressure steam turbine, MSF
5.0
Extraction-condensing steam turbine, 10.0
MSF
Combined cycle, MSF
18.0
Reverse osmosis, RO
0.81.5
It is worth to note that the combined cycle
distillation plant leads to very high PWR, which
will provide a substantial amount of unused power
capacity in the wintertime.
As in the wintertime the demand for power is
low, whereas the water demand is steady through
the whole year, a good opportunity is there to
introduce electrical driven desalination process
like RO to complement with power and thermal
desalination plant.
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Table 1
Seawater desalination price structure
Thermal
SWRO
Capex
Intake and outfall structures
Contribution from steam generating plant
Desalination process equipment
Civil works
%
1015
515
7072
5
Capex
Intake and outfall structures
Pre-treatment including civil works
Equipment
Membranes
Civil works
%
520
510
4050
2535
5
Opex
Electrical consumption and heat input
Maintenance and overhaul
Chemicals
Personnel costs
%
6080
1015
8
10
Opex
Electrical consumption
Maintenance and overhaul
Chemicals
Personnel costs
%
5060
2026
10
12