Mechanical vapor compressio--Membrane distillation hybrids for reduced specific energy consumption

The energy efficiency of membrane distillation (MD) systems is low when compared to other thermal desalination systems. This leads to high water production costs when conventional fuels such as natural gas are used. In MD, separation of pure product water from feedwater is driven by differences in vapor pressure between the streams. Thus, the process can occur at low temperature and ambient pressure. As a result, MD is most frequently paired with waste or renewable sources of low temperature heat energy that can be economically more feasible. MD systems with internal heat regeneration have been compared to and modeled similar to counter-flow heat exchangers. In this study, MD is used to replace the preheater heat exchanger used for thermal energy recovery from the brine stream in mechanical vapor compression (MVC). Using MD in place of the heat exchanger results not only in effectively free thermal energy for MD, but also subsidized cost of capital, since the MD module is replacing expensive heat exchanger equipment. The MVC–MD hybrid system can lead to about 6% decrease in cost of water, compared to a stand-alone MVC system. The savings increase with: an increase in MVC operating temperature, a decrease in MVC recovery ratio, and with a decrease in MD capital cost. The conductive gap configuration of MD leads to maximum savings, followed by air gap and permeate gap systems, over a range of operating conditions, assuming equal specific cost of capital for these configurations.Masdar Institute of Science and Technology/MIT/Abu Dhabi, UAE (Cooperative agreement, Reference no.02/MI/MI/ CP/11/07633/GEN/G/00

Thermodynamic analysis of brine management methods: Zero-discharge desalination and salinity-gradient power production

Growing desalination capacity worldwide has made management of discharge brines an increasingly urgent environmental challenge. An important step in understanding how to choose between different brine management processes is to study the energetics of these processes. In this paper, we analyze two different ways of managing highly saline brines. The first method is complete separation with production of salts (i.e., zero-discharge desalination or ZDD). Thermodynamic limits of the ZDD process were calculated. This result was applied to the state-of-the-art industrial ZDD process to quantify how close these systems are to the thermodynamic limit, and to compare the energy consumption of the brine concentration step to the crystallization step. We conclude that the brine concentration step has more potential for improvement compared to the crystallization step. The second brine management method considered is salinity-gradient power generation through pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO), which utilizes the brine's high concentration to produce useful work while reducing its concentration by mixing the brine with a lower salinity stream in a controlled manner. We model the PRO system coupled with a desalination system using a detailed numerical optimization, which resulted in about 0.42 kW h/m3 of energy saving.Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) (Project No. P31475EC01

ENERGY REQUIREMENT OF ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGIES FOR DESALINATING GROUNDWATER FOR IRRIGATION

Increased global water demand coupled with limited water resources has led to acute water shortage in many regions, significantly affecting a griculture, which is the world’s largest consumer of water. Groundwater resources are thus increasingly being used to meet irrigation requirements. However, groundwater resources around the world tend to be saline ( 0.5 ≤ S ≤ 5 g/kg ) rquiring desalination before use. Furthermore, with decreasing water availability, demands for producing permeate from the feed at higher recoveries (>85%) is also increasing. In this work, a thermodynamic least work analysis for desalination and pumping ground water is developed first. Then, the actual energy required by high recovery desalination technologies such as brackish water reverse osmosis (RO), closed circuit reverse osmosis (CCRO) and electrodialysis reversal (EDR) are compared with the thermodynamic least work of desalination from 50-95% recovery. CCRO consumed the least energy until a recovery of 92% after which EDR consumed the least energy. While the energy required for RO and CCRO changed with recovery, EDR energy consumption remained approximately constant at 0.85 kWh/m³. Water table depth was also found to significantly contribute to the total energy consumed, with the power required to pump groundwater being comparable to the desalination power requirements at water table depths greater than 50 m. Thus, the choice of selection of desalination technologies is particularly crucial for water table depths less than 50 m

Cost and energy needs of RO-ED-crystallizer systems for zero brine discharge seawater desalination

A zero brine discharge seawater desalination concept integrating reverse osmosis (RO), electrodialysis (ED) and crystallizer into a single system (REC) is presented. Analytical models were used to optimize parameters and minimize water production costs. Parameters varied were: the ratio of seawater to RO brine in the ED diluate channel, ED current density, ED diluate outlet salinity, electricity and salt prices, and RO recovery by adding high pressure RO (HPRO). Using only RO brine instead of only seawater in the ED diluate channel reduced water production costs by 87% from 27 to 3.5 $/m³ while increasing salt production costs 26$/tonne-salt. The former was best for brine minimization, and the latter for salt production. Optimizing ED current density reduced REC costs by another 14% to 3.0 $/m³ while increasing specific energy consumption 26$/tonne-salt will justify the cost of adding an ED-crystallizer. REC systems may be economically feasible in parts of the Middle-East. Producing other products such as Mg(OH)₂ or Br₂ may further improve economics. Keywords: Reverse osmosis; Electrodialysis; Hybrid; Salt production; Brine concentration; Seawate

Feasibility Study of an Electrodialysis System for In-Home Water Desalination and Purification in Urban India

Desalination of high salinity water is an effective way of improving the aesthetic quality of drinking water and has been demonstrated to be a characteristic valued by consumers. Across India, 60% of the groundwater, the primary water source for millions, is brackish or contains a high salt content with total dissolved solids (TDS) ranging from 500 parts per million (ppm) to 3,000ppm. The government does not provide sufficient desalination treatment before the water reaches the tap of a consumer. Therefore consumers have turned to in-home desalination. However, current products are either expensive or have low recovery, product water output per untreated feed water, (∼30%) wasting water resources. Electrodialysis (ED) is a promising technology that desalinates water while maintaining higher recovery (up to 95%) compared to existing consumer reverse osmosis (RO) products. This paper first explores the in-home desalination market to determine critical design requirements for an in-home ED system. A model was then used to evaluate and optimize the performance of an ED stack at this scale and designated salinity range. Additionally, testing was conducted in order to validate the model and demonstrate feasibility. Finally, cost estimates of the proposed in-home ED system and product design concept are presented. The results of this work identified a system design that provides consumers with up to 80% recovery of feed water with cost and size competitive to currently available in-home RO products

Cost and energy requirements of hybrid RO and ED brine concentration systems for salt production

A new concept to concentrate seawater up to 200 g/kg for producing vacuum salt using a reverse osmosis (RO) system hybridized with an electrodialysis (ED) system is presented. The RO system operates up to pressures of 120 bar and concentrates seawater up to 120 g/kg with the ED system concentrating RO brine to 200 g/kg. A parametric analysis to minimize the specific cost of brine concentration was conducted. Parameters varied were: the degree of RO-ED hybridization, ED current density, electricity prices and water prices. Optimal hybrid RO-ED designs reduced brine concentration costs by 33–70% over standalone ED systems, with revenue generated from water co-production further subsidizing costs by 1–6%. Optimizing ED current density reduced costs the most. Including a crystallizer, the total reduction in production cost over a standalone ED-crystallizer system was 19–55%, with the production cost for a typical case being $111/tonne-salt. The proposed RO-ED-crystallizer (REC) systems were found to be techno-economically feasible in Cyprus, Japan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the USA. At a road transportation distance of 735 km, REC based seawater vacuum salt was competitive with conventional vacuum salt. REC systems may open up the potential of small-scale decentralized salt production. Keywords: Reverse osmosis; Electrodialysis; Hybrid; Salt production; Brine concentration; Seawate

An experimental investigation of the surface tension of seawater

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2014.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 89-93).Surface tension of seawater was measured for absolute salinities S = (20.01, 35.18, 40.49, 79.39, 121.54) g/kg across a temperature range of T = (0 - 90)°C at atmospheric pressure using the Wilhelmy plate method. The uncertainty within measurements varied between 0.04 - 0.33 mN/m with the average uncertainty being 0.12 mN/m. The experimental procedures were validated with tests conducted on ACS reagent grade water and aqueous sodium chloride solutions. A best fit correlation was developed expressing surface tension of seawater as a function of temperature and salinity. The average absolute deviation between measurements and the correlation was 0.19% while the maximum deviation was 0.60%. The surface tension of seawater was found to be comparable to within 1.37% of the surface tension of aqueous sodium chloride. The surface tension of 0.2 [mu]m microfiltered and ultraviolet radiation treated natural seawater was found to be similar to that of laboratory prepared seawater.by Kishor Govind Nayar.S.M

Improving seawater desalination and seawater desalination brine management

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2019Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "Thesis contains very faint/illegible footnote numbering"--Disclainer Notice page.Includes bibliographical references.Water scarcity is an increasing problem globally. Seawater desalination is increasingly being relied upon as a means of mitigating the problem of water scarcity. However, seawater desalination has costs associated with it: capital costs, cost of energy to desalinate and environmental costs from the discharge of high salinity brine. Efficient and cost-effective seawater desalination and desalination brine management systems are necessary to make seawater desalination a sustainable scalable process. This work seeks to improve seawater desalination and seawater desalination brine management in several ways. For the first time, the thermophysical properties of seawater have been characterized as a function of pressure across the full desalination operating regimes of temperature, salinity and pressure. Functions that allow accurate thermodynamic least work of desalination and seawater flow exergy analysis have been developed.The least work of desalination, brine concentration and salt production was investigated and the performance of state-of-the-art brine concentrators and crystallizers was calculated. Hybrid designs of reverse osmosis (RO) and electrodialysis (ED) were proposed to be integrated with a crystallizer to concentrate desalination brine more efficiently. The RO-ED-crystallizer concept was applied to two separate applications: (a) salt production from seawater and (b) zero brine discharge seawater desalination. A parametric analysis to minimize the specific cost of salt production and water production was conducted. Parameters varied were: the ratio of seawater to RO brine in the ED diluate channel, ED current density, ED diluate outlet salinity, electricity, water and salt prices, and RO recovery by adding a high pressure RO (HPRO) stage. Results showed that significant cost reductions could be achieved in RO-ED systems by increasing the ED current density from 300 A/m² to 600 A/m².Increasing RO brine salinity by using HPRO and operating at 120 bar pressure reduced salt production costs while increasing water production costs. Transport properties of monovalent selective ED (MSED) membranes were also experimentally obtained for sodium chloride, significantly improving the accuracy of modeling MSED brine concentration systems. MSED cell pairs transported only about ~~50% the water but nearly as much salt as a standard ED cell pair, while having twice the average membrane resistance.Supported by Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT and KFUPM Project No. R13-CW-10, King Fahd University of Petroleoum and Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran, Saudi Arabiaby Kishor Govind Nayar.Ph. D.Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineerin

On the merits of using multi-stage and counterflow electrodialysis for reduced energy consumption

The cost of electrodialysis (ED) systems can be decreased by decreasing their power consumption. Such reductions may be achieved by using degrees of freedom in the system's configuration to obtain a more uniform spatial distribution of the rate of entropy generation, as explained by the theorem of equipartition of entropy generation. In this paper, we study possible improvements to the energy efficiency of electrodialysis through the use of two electric stages with different voltages, and through operation in a counterflow configuration. We first consider how a two-stage ED system should be operated. In particular, we look at how the voltages and current densities should be chosen. In addition, we quantify the effect of operating under two voltages in brackish-water desalination and in high-salinity brine concentration. Finally, we quantify the effect of operating ED in counterflow for the same applications. We show that high ED fixed costs prevent the achievement of significant improvements in energy efficiency. If fixed costs are reduced, and larger systems become cost-effective, we show that a power reduction of up to 29% is possible by going from a single-stage to a two-stage configuration. Keywords: Equipartition of entropy generation; Electrodialysis; Brackish water desalination; Brine concentration; Energy efficienc

Thermophysical properties of seawater: A review and new correlations that include pressure dependence

In a previous paper, the authors have given correlations for seawater thermophysical properties as functions of temperature and salinity, but only for near atmospheric pressures. Seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) systems operate routinely at pressures of 6 MPa or more; however, experimental data for seawater properties at elevated pressures (P = 0.1–12 MPa) are limited to a salinity of 56 g/kg. To accurately model and design SWRO and thermal desalination systems, a reliable method of estimating the effect of pressure on seawater properties is required. In this work, we present this method and new correlations for seawater thermophysical properties that are valid within the range: t = 0–120 °C, S = 0–120 g/kg, and P = 0–12 MPa. Seawater isothermal compressibility data, available until a salinity of 56 g/kg, were used to develop a correlation for compressibility that is extrapolated to 160 g/kg. Thermodynamic identities were then used to develop accurate pressure dependent correlations for seawater: density, isobaric expansivity, specific heat capacity, enthalpy, entropy and Gibbs energy. New correlations were proposed for seawater: vapor pressure, thermal conductivity and activity of water. Recent work on seawater surface tension and osmotic coefficient were reviewed. Uncertainty bounds were calculated for each correlation.King Fahd University of Petroleum and MineralsNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. 1122374)Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT and KFUPM ((KFUPM (Project No. R13-CW-10)