Abstract
Compared with the common marine renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and wave energy, etc., the hydraulic pressure stored in the deep seawater can output stable and successive energy flow. Thus, it can be directly coupled with the reverse osmosis (RO) process to supply drinkable mineral water for crews of Deep Sea Space Station (DSSS). We proposed a novel submarine RO desalination system driven by the hydraulic pressure of deep seawater (SHP-RO), composed of a desalination branch to generate fresh water and a back pressure branch to ensure the depth independence of the desalination. The influences of the deep sea environment on the RO were analyzed, based on which the pretreatment of the seawater and the preparation of the drinkable mineral water were studied. The turbine-based energy recovery scheme was investigated in virtue of the CFD simulation on the flow behavior in the different turbine series. It was predicted that, when the DSSS was located at the depth of 1100 m and the operating pressure of the RO process was 6.0 MPa, for a drinkable water production rate of 240 m3/d, the recovered hydraulic pressure energy can achieve 39.22 kW·h, which was enough for driving electricity consumers in the SHP-RO system.
Highlights
Introduction e UnitedNations proposed guaranteeing a sustainable supply of high-quality fresh water to the world [1], since fresh water supply, one of the most important bases of human survival and social development, is faced with increasing challenge due to the population expansion, industrialization, and various pollutions, etc. e method of obtaining sufficient fresh water by desalination is generally accepted by most people, especially in some areas short of water and located in coast area [1, 2]
Erefore, renewable energy sources like solar energy, wind energy, tidal energy, wave energy, and temperature-difference energy become much attractive to drive the seawater desalination, with great development prospect and being tested widely [1, 2, 5, 7,8,9,10,11]. e statistics suggested that the solar-powered desalination systems have occupied 32% of the renewable energy desalination field and the windpowered desalination schemes accounted for 19% [12]. e combination of renewable energy with seawater desalination system brings great challenges to conventional desalination system. e intermittence and volatility of wind and solar energy especially cause a series of problems such as the change of system power or even interruptions which will do damage to the equipment and greatly reduce the service life of the equipment [12, 13]
In the submarine desalination plants, the devices are set submarine at a depth of 500–800 m, and driven pressure for reverse osmosis (RO) is obtained by the pressure difference between the hydrostatic pressure and atmospheric pressure. e produced fresh water is collected in a storage tank and pumped to the sea level, and the brine is discharged into the sea [15,16,17]
Summary
A Hydrostatic Pressure-Driven Desalination System for Large-Scale Deep Sea Space Station. With the increasing human exploration of the distant and deep sea, Deep Sea Space Station (DSSS) will become a commonly used carrier for human activity in which fresh water supply is necessary especially for the long-term stay For this demand, the submarine desalination plant driven by the hydraulic water pressure is a perfect solution for fresh water supply, since it does not consume any conventional energy and can utilize the plenty seawater and its hydraulic energy stably without fluctuation and intermittence which are inherent in other renewable energy sources. We proposed a novel submarine RO desalination process driven by the hydraulic pressure of seawater (SHP-RO) to generate drinkable mineral water for the large- and small-scale DSSS from nutritive deep seawater. E desalinated and depressurized fresh water is collected in the DSSS water tank at atmospheric pressure, and mixed with the deep seawater from the pressure valve and necessary energy dissipation devices at a set proportion to generate the mineral drinkable water.
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