Minimisation of Energy Consumption via Optimisation of a Simple Hybrid System of Multi Effect Distillation and Permeate Reprocessing Reverse Osmosis Processes for Seawater Desalination

Abstract

Abstract Multi Effect Distillation (MED) and Reverse Osmosis (RO) processes have been expansively explored for fresh water production from seawater resources. Interestingly, the performance indicators including energy consumption of different proposed arrangements of hybrid system of MED and RO processes have been analysed in a previous study by the same authors. This in turn has explored the feasibility of a simple design of permeate reprocessing RO process and MED process of hybrid system that corresponding the lowest energy consumption compared to other experienced arrangements of hybrid system. However, this design still operated at a significantly high level of energy utilisation measured in kWh per m 3 of produced water. In this research, the lowest possible energy consumption of the chosen hybrid system is investigated via the embedment of an optimisation framework in the same author’s previous operation model for the same design. Occasionally, the optimisation problem is framed as a Nonlinear Programming problem to locate the optimal control variables of the associated RO process within their upper and lower limits to achieve the main objective function. This in turn has resulted in mitigating the total energy utilisation of the hybrid system with satisfying a constraint of high-quality produced water.