Development of the Zone-Purification Process For Preparing Potable Water From Sea Water

摘要

As a first step toward obtaining the optimum economic zone-freezing process, the vertical-tube unit was simulated on an analog computer to determine the effect of design parameters on product salinity. With this information plus some additional experi¬mental freezing data, it was possible to show that the optimum vertical-tube unit would require-four stages, would freeze 13 per cent of the feed before discharging it, and would require that the temperature difference in the freezing zones be 3 F.nBased on these results, it was possible to estimate that the total plant investment for a plant producing 100,000 gallons of potable water per day would be about $2,600,000. The estimated operating cost for a plant this size was found to be about $9.60 per 1,000 gallons of potable water. For a plant designed to produce 10 million gallons of potable water per day, the total plant investment and the daily operating cost were esti¬mated at about $115,000,000 and $4.20 per 1,000 gallons, respectively.nIt is unlikely that these costs could be reduced further even with major changes in the process.