Abstract
A requirement for developing desalination efforts in coastal regions suffering water scarcity is proposed to address the increased water demand and limited traditional water supply. The determination of a plant capacity and water allocation scheme in a multiple-source water supply system, as the first problem in planning desalination under streamflow and water demand uncertainties, remains a challenge. To address this gap, an interval-parameter two-stage stochastic programming model is developed in this study. The first-stage problem is to determine a proper desalination plant capacity, and the second is the development of a water allocation scheme under the uncertainties of natural streamflows, water demands, benefits and economic losses. The objective function is to maximize the net benefit of the system, and the cost function of desalination, including capital and operational costs, implying environmental impact, is linearized within a range of plant capacities to solve the model. The proposed approach is applied to an urban area of Weihai in China to illustrate the validity of the model. The results suggest a capacity of 46 × 103 m3/d in 2030 and 55 × 103 m3/d in 2040. Sensitivity analyses of the parameters indicate that a decrease in the unit price of electricity leads to an increase in the utilization level of desalinated seawater. A complementary relationship was observed between reclaimed water and desalinated seawater, in that a decrease in the use rate of reclaimed water from 0.38 to 0.18 led to a 15% increase in desalinated plant capacity.
Highlights
Increased water demand resulting from rapid socioeconomic development, intensive urbanization and the uneven spatiotemporal distribution of natural water resources raised by climate change contributes to water scarcity and brings difficulties in water resource planning and management (Milly et al 2008; Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2016)
This study aimed to optimize the desalinated plant capacity and water allocation strategy for multiple water sources considering the full costs of water sources
Coastal areas are superior in the utilization of seawater, and desalinated seawater has become an important component in urban water supply systems when uneven and limited natural water resources are insufficient to fulfill increasing water demand
Summary
Increased water demand resulting from rapid socioeconomic development, intensive urbanization and the uneven spatiotemporal distribution of natural water resources raised by climate change contributes to water scarcity and brings difficulties in water resource planning and management (Milly et al 2008; Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2016). Traditional water supply sources will gradually fail to fulfill the increased water demand (Paton et al 2014; Larsen et al 2016), and nonconventional water supply sources such as diverted water (DW), reclaimed water (RW) and desalinated seawater (DSW) are being developed and utilized to alleviate water scarcity (Beh et al 2015). Compared to surface water supply sources, nonconventional sources have better performance in terms of the stability of water quality and water quantity and are less vulnerable to global warming (Beuhler 2003). The points of concern in desalination are high energy consumption, economic cost and other environmental concerns (Heihsel et al.2019). With the technological progress in desalination technology and the attention given to water scarcity, the energy consumption and cost of desalinated seawater have continually decreased (Bennett, 2011; Bhojwani et al, 2019), and the total capacity of all operating desalination plants in the world reached 92.5 million m3/d in 2018 (Qasim et al 2019; Nassrullah et al 2020)
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