MINIMIZATION OF DESALINATION ENERGY CONSUMPTION USING EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

摘要

Reducing energy consumption is critical for lowering the cost of desalination and addressingenvironmental concerns about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the continued use ofconventional fossil fuels as the primary energy source for seawater desalination plants. Costsassociated with electricity are 30% of the total cost of desalinated water while using reverseosmosis (RO) membranes. In this study, a comprehensive literature review was conducted togather information on emerging desalination technologies followed by a pilot-scale study toevaluate nanocomposite RO membranes (NanoH_2O Inc.) and closed circuit RO technology(Desalitech Inc.) for seawater desalination. Based on the literature review, the highest energyreduction (50%) for seawater desalination has been reported with the combination ofelectrodialysis (ED) and continuous electrodeionization (CEDI). Energy reduction using closedcircuit RO technology and nanocomposite RO has been reported to be 35% and 20%,respectively. Alternate technologies such as ion concentration polarization, forward osmosis andnanotube-based membranes show promise for energy reduction but there is a lack of operationaldata and most of these technologies are still under development. In this paper, we present areview of these promising and innovative desalination technologies available for energyminimization followed by results obtained from the pilot-scale study.