Performance analysis of a novel combined open absorption heat pump and FlashME seawater desalination system for flue gas heat and water recovery

Abstract

Thermal desalination processes generally consume a huge amount of thermal energy and industries release a large amount of latent waste heat in flue gas exhausts into the environment. In order to efficiently utilize this waste heat and to improve the energy efficiency of desalination process, this paper presents a novel combined system based on the open cycle absorption heat pump and low-grade thermal energy driven FlashME desalination. The proposed combined system is designed to recover the latent waste heat from flue gas exhausts in a parallel double stage open absorption heat pump which is driven by multiple energy sources and efficiently utilizes the recovered low temperature heat in FlashME for freshwater production. The validated process model of the combined system is developed in Aspen Plus and a parametric assessment is carried out to analyze its energy performance with the impact of various independent operational parameters by using HCOOK-H2O as an absorbent solution. The simulation results of the parametric study show that the combined system is capable of recovering the waste heat with an efficiency of 89.42 % by operating at a thermal performance coefficient of 2.21 and utilizes this heat in the form of hot seawater at 70 °C to drive FlashME desalination process for freshwater production at the performance ratio of 3.05. The critical analysis of the results highlights that the heat recovery performance of the absorption cycle is strongly dependent on the inlet parameters of flue gas and spray solution. In contrast, the water recovery performance of FlashME is dependent on regeneration pressure such that the water recovery rate varies from 9.19 % to 37.17 % with a pressure variation between 23.23 and 51.39 kPa which raises the seawater temperature 60–79 °C before the flashing stage. Furthermore, the system is flexible enough to operate with two heat sources of different temperature levels by adjusting the regeneration load in separate regenerators.