Abstract
For future sustainable seawater desalination, the importance of achieving better energy efficiency of the existing 19,500 commercial-scale desalination plants cannot be over emphasized. The major concern of the desalination industry is the inadequate approach to energy efficiency evaluation of diverse seawater desalination processes by omitting the grade of energy supplied. These conventional approaches would suffice if the efficacy comparison were to be conducted for the same energy input processes. The misconception of considering all derived energies as equivalent in the desalination industry has severe economic and environmental consequences. In the realms of the energy and desalination system planners, serious judgmental errors in the process selection of green installations are made unconsciously as the efficacy data are either flawed or inaccurate. Inferior efficacy technologies’ implementation decisions were observed in many water-stressed countries that can burden a country’s economy immediately with higher unit energy cost as well as cause more undesirable environmental effects on the surroundings. In this article, a standard primary energy-based thermodynamic framework is presented that addresses energy efficacy fairly and accurately. It shows clearly that a thermally driven process consumes 2.5–3% of standard primary energy (SPE) when combined with power plants. A standard universal performance ratio-based evaluation method has been proposed that showed all desalination processes performance varies from 10–14% of the thermodynamic limit. To achieve 2030 sustainability goals, innovative processes are required to meet 25–30% of the thermodynamic limit.
Highlights
The world’s demand for increasingly scarce water is escalating rapidly, challenging its accessibility for the life cycle and putting the global population at risk
We develop a detailed thermodynamic frame issues, namely; (i) an accurate apportionment of primary fuel exergy across each processes in a work based on a standard primary energy (SPE) approach to resolve two main issues, namely; (i) an combined cycle arrangement based on their operational parameters; and (ii) comparison of all accurate apportionment of primary fuel exergy across each processes in a combined cycle arrangement desalination processes at a common platform called the standard universal performance ratio based on their operational parameters; and (ii) comparison of all desalination processes at a common (SUPR), by converting different types and grades of energies to standard primary energy
The derived energies utilized by the separation processes can be different in grades, so the equivalent work approach is applied, where the simulated heat engine will produce the same arbitrary work by operating between defined temperature limits of the standard primary energy (SPE)
Summary
The world’s demand for increasingly scarce water is escalating rapidly, challenging its accessibility for the life cycle and putting the global population at risk. In 2000, overall world water demand was 4000 billion cubic meter and it is estimated to increase over 58% by 2030. Conventional water sources called renewable resource such as surface water and ground water are not able to patch up the gap between supply and demand of fresh water. This growing gap can only be filled by non-conventional and non-renewable sources such as wastewater treatment and seawater desalination. Installed desalination capacities are projected in the near future to fulfil world water demand. The share in the world desalination market and their respective published published specific specific energy energy consumptions, consumptions,seawater seawater reverse reverseosmosis osmosis(SWRO)
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