1. Title, Journal and Authors

Title : Energy saving methodology for the SWRO desalination process: control of operating temperature and pressure

Journal : Surveys in Operations Research and Management Science (2014) 56-85

Authors : Seung Joon Kim^a, Young Geun Lee^a, Sanghoun Oh^b, Yun Seok Lee^a, Young Mi Kim^a, Moon Gu Jeon^b, Sangho Lee^c, In S, Kim^a,d, Joon Ha Kim^a,d,e,*

^aDepartment of Environmental Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju 500-712, Korea

^bDepartment of Information and communications, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju 500-712, Korea

^cDepartment of Environmental Research, Korea Institute of Construction Technology, Gyeonggi-do Korea

^dCenter for Seawater Desalination Plant, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju 500-712l, Korea

^eSustainable Water Resource Technology Center, GIST, Gwangju 500-712, Korea

Tel. 82-62-970-3277, e-mail: Joonkim@gist.ac.kr

 

2. Summary

  This study proposes a new operation methodology for energy saving in the Fujairah seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant, as the optimum feed pressure is determined at the controlled operating temperature. To this end, two functional models were developed by genetic programming (GP) using two-year operational data. The results first indicate that the temperature control significantly reduces the required feed pressure at a reasonably high temperature. Second, the required feed pressure could be substantially reduced because the permeate water flow rate (PFR) is determined by the optimized feed pressure instead of the permeate pressure actually used to maintain a steady PFR in Fujairah. As a result, the proposed methodology can potentially reduce the required feed pressure, by approximately 10 bar, under the identical performance of both PFR and permeate water total dissolved solids (TDS).

 

3. Originality & Creativity 

  The results of this study show that the hybrid desalination plant has a significant economic potential because utilization of the thermal energy extracted from the MSF process can improve the efficiency of the SWRO process.

Moreover, it was shown that applying the nonisobaric feed pressure control to the plant can reduce the required feed pressure for the entire process.

 

4. Application to research

  This study implies that the optimization of operation and management of MSF-hybridized SWRO processes can considerably improve the efficiency of the desalination process in terms of energy and, eventually, cost saving.

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5. Contact

 

Jeongwoo Moon / Intern student

 

Environmental Systems Engineering Lab.

 

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

 

1 Oryong-dong Buk-gu Gwangju, 500-712, Korea

 

 

 

Phone : +82-10-9384-8271

 

E-mail : mjwabc@naver.com