How to Use Wind Power Efficiently for Seawater Reverse Osmosis Desalination

Divas Karimanzira

doi:10.4236/epe.2020.129031

Abstract

Due to water scarcity and the global trends in climate change, winning drinking water through desalination is increasingly becoming an option, especially using reverse osmosis (RO) membrane technology. Operating a reverse osmosis desalination plant is associated with several expenses and energy consumption that take a very large share. Several studies have shown that wind power incurs lower energy costs compared to other renewable energy sources, therefore, should be the first choice to be coupled to an RO desalination system to clean water using sustainable energy. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the feasibility of driving an RO desalination system using wind power with and without pressure vessel energy storage and small scale energy recovery using Clark pump based on simulation models. The performance of both variants was compared with several scenarios of wind patterns. As expected buffering and energy recovery delivered higher water production and better water quality demonstrating the importance of an energy storage/recovery system for a wind-power-supplied desalination plant.

Highlights

Population increase, water scarcity, global trends in climate change among other things are the drivers for the increased commercialization of winning water by desalination
Several studies have shown that wind power incurs lower energy costs compared to other renewable energy sources, should be the first choice to be coupled to an reverse osmosis (RO) desalination system to clean water using sustainable energy
In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of driving an RO desalination system using wind power with and without pressure vessel energy storage and small scale energy recovery using Clark pump based on simulation models

Summary

Introduction

Population increase (means increased fresh water demand), water scarcity (fresh water reserves are depleting), global trends in climate change among other things are the drivers for the increased commercialization of winning water by desalination. RO processes require high pressures, because the transmembrane pressure should be overcome and this is associated with high energy costs. For these RO systems, main expenses are on energy consumption and cost for maintaining and replacing the membranes, which has a share of 45% to 50% of the total water generation [2] [3]. Feo-Garcia et al stated that according to the feed water quality, the membrane characteristics and the condition under which the plant is operating, 3 - 8 kWh energy is required to win 1000 liters of permeate [2] [4]. Powering a desalination plant with alternative energy sources is worth considering [5]

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Conclusion