Abstract
In this study, three pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) power plants are proposed to be built on the Red Sea–Dead Sea (RSDS) water conveyance project, to generate power from the salinity gradient between two water streams at different salt concentrations. The first two proposed plants are to be built after sea water reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants, where Red Sea water and the rejected brine from SWRO plants are used as feed and draw solutions, respectively. In the third proposed plant, Red Sea water and Dead Sea water will be used. Results showed that the three proposed plants are technically feasible while the third plant is the only one that is economically feasible with a 134.5 MW capacity and a 0.056 $/KWh levelized cost of electricity (LCE). The power generated from the third PRO power plant accounts for about 24.7% of the power needed for the RSDS project that can be used to power SWRO-2 in order to reduce the electricity consumption by 49.3%. If the generated power from the proposed PRO plant is sold to the Jordanian national electricity grid at the current selling price in accordance with Jordanian prices of electricity, a saving of about 21.2% can be attained. It is found that using the power generated by the current proposed plants for desalination project purposes will significantly reduce the price of desalinated water produced from SWRO desalination plants.
Highlights
Blue energy is one of the renewable energy sources that has a great potential to generate power by mixing two solutions of different salt concentrations
To calculate the net output power PWnet from the pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) plant, power losses and parasitic power consumption are subtracted from the maximum theoretical power: PWnet = PWmax − PWL_m − PWL_tg − PWL_pu − PWL_pt
Using the power generated for project purposes is recommended from an economic point of view, which can significantly reduce the price of desalinated water produced from sea water reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants
Summary
Blue energy is one of the renewable energy sources that has a great potential to generate power by mixing two solutions of different salt concentrations. Sea water could be used as a feed solution mixed with higher concentrated brine as a draw solution Some studies investigated this way to exploit the osmotic energy from the brines of desalination plants [16,17,18], and hypersaline water from salt lakes [11,13,19,20,21,22]. We analyze possible scenarios to exploit osmotic energy for power generation using a PRO process from the on-going Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance Project (RSDS) [25] based on the available data from the project and a recent modified commercial RO membrane [15].
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