Steady state and dynamic modeling of RO desalination modules and system using EES

Abstract

In this article, we introduce a powerful software tool Engineering Equation Solver (EES) and apply it to create steady state and dynamic models for a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination system. EES is a general equation-solving program that can numerically solve thousands of coupled nonlinear algebraic equations. It can also be used to solve differential equations and optimization problems. In RO desalination system design, amount of coupled differential equations related to mass balance and momentum balance need to be solved to develop system model. Hence, by applying EES to solve differential equations is a very efficient and effective method to build RO desalination system model. Comparing with Matlab, EES has the advantage of easy programming and fast convergence speed. It significantly reduces the time spending for programming to solve nonlinear equations and researchers can focus on RO system optimal design and analysis.