1. Title, Journal and Authors
Title: Energy use for membrane seawater desalination – current status and trends
Journal: Water Globe Consultants, LLC, 824 Contravest Lane, Winter Springs, FL 32708, USA
Authors: Nikolay Voutchkov
2. Summary
This paper introduces the current status of energy use of seawater desalination and presents measures to improve much energy demands, the biggest drawback of seawater desalination.
Discuss the pros and cons of combining offshore desalination plants with SWRO desalination plants, how to reduce energy demand by lowering salt concentration, alternatives to reduce RO system energy use, and how to produce freshwater with less energy through emerging desalination technology to reduce energy use.
3. Originality and Creativity
In groundwater near coastal areas, seawater often mixes and produces high salt concentrations, causing problems. It would be good to apply SWRO process to solve these problems.
4. Application to research
1. The combination of offshore power plants and SWRO desalination facilities helps to reduce energy in the desalination process through high-temperature cooling water and surrounding seawater from offshore power plants. However, this has disadvantages such as the need for pre-treatment, the need for frequent membrane washing, and the acceleration of bio-reverse currents.
2. Combining local saline and cooling water at offshore power plants, combined with SWRO desalination facilities, it can reduce the amount of energy needed to remove salt in the desalination process by reducing the adverse effects of the aquatic ecosystem of coastal power plants and lowering the overall salt concentration.
3. It is possible to reduce salt by mixing secondary discharge water and desalination plant source water in the highly treated wastewater treatment plant to save energy.
4. Improving the disadvantage of SWRO's high energy needs by designing RO membranes and membrane, designing low-recovery plants for full automation, reducing energy costs through system partitioning, increasing desalinization efficiency through the use of high-efficiency pumps, and directly transmitting the high pressure of concentrated seawater to RO through pressure exchangers to recover energy, etc.
5. Look at the applicability of SWRO technology through various desalination technologies with high potential for energy saving.
5. Contact
Ma, Kyoung Rim / M.S. program
Environmental Systems Engineering Lab.
School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Engineering
Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology
1 Oryong-dong Buk-gu Gwangju, 500-712, Korea
Phone: 010-5058-6832
E-mail: dkvmfhelxp34@gm.gist.ac.kr