Water desalination: status, technology, challenges, and potential

Noam Lior
Life Fellow ASME, Assoc. Fellow AIAA
Editor-in-Chief, Advances in Water Desalination Board of Editors Member: Desalination, The International Journal of Desalting and Water Purification, Desalination and Water Treatment Science and Engineering . The International Desalination & Water Reuse Quarterly, 1997-2003. Chair, Scientific Committee, International Centre for Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics University of Pennsylvania, 1 lior@seas.upenn.edu Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~lior/

The water problem and New Water

Noam Lior

Rising population, standards of living and water pollution are diminishing the amounts of naturally available fresh water of good quality while the demand is increasing relentlessly "Manufactured water" or is making a considerable contribution to the world's potable, industrial, and agricultural water supply. The technology is improving in cost-performance and reliability
Desalination processes remain energy intensive and are polluting, needing strong and rapid development It is increasingly recognized that desalination must be 2 performed sustainably

Noam Lior

The major desalination methods

Distillation (2/3 of market)

multistage flash (MSF; heat) multi-effect (ME; heat) vapor compression (VC; mechanical power) Membrane distillation (MD; temperature (heat), under development) Reverse Osmosis (RO, pressure) Electrodialysis (ED, electrical potential) Membrane distillation (MD, temperature (heat), under development) Forward osmosis (FO, under development)

Membrane Separation (1/3 of market)

Ion exchange (IE, adsorption, for low salinity waters; mechanical power) Freezing (mechanical power and cooling)

Some Desalination Statistics

~ 15,000 large plants Largest plant (2009?): 880,000 m3/day + 900 MW electricity, Shuaiba III, Saudi Arabia. A large dual purpose plant (1997): 341,000 m3/day (75 MIGD) multi-stage flash (MSF) Al Taweelah B in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; dual-purpose plant, produces also 732 MWe of power. Producing ~65 million m3/d total, globally 0.6% of total or ~3% of municipal/domestic use, abstracted water $0.54 - 1.4 - 3/m3 (<1 for brackish water) 1,700 manufacturing companies

Noam Lior

Global online desalination capacity

Noam Lior

Water desalination contracted and commissioned desalted water capacity

o GWI DesalData 2010 Report predicts that total contracted capacity will reach 129.9 million m/d by the end of 2016.

o Capital expenditure on desalination is predicted to rise from $6 billion in 2010 to $18.3 billion by 2016.

Global online desalination capacity

Global Water Intelligence Report
6

Noam Lior

Annual new contracted and commissioned capacity

Total worldwide installed capacity by user type

Feedwater trends

Noam Lior

Technology trends

Noam Lior

Annual new contracted seawater desalination capacity by technology

Desalination top contractors

Top 20 EPC contractors since 2000

Noam Lior

Top 10 desalination plant suppliers since 2000 - now and four years ago

EPC: Engineering, Procurement and Construction

10

Noam Lior

Unique challenges of water desalination

Internal:

The extremely low price of the product, down to $0.5/ton now Corrosiveness of the saline water Scaling (deposition of precipitates) Organic fouling Effect of gases

External:

Environmental impact
Some health concerns (preventable)
11

Desalination Plant Security

Noam Lior

Kuwait 1991

Ingestion into the plant of contaminated saline water feed (oil spills, heavy metals, etc.) affect both product and plant To avert consequences of poor regional management, accidents, war, and terrorism, it is vitally important to

design the plant with robust safeguards against ingestion of undesirably contaminated saline water ensure that regional resources' management prevents such contamination provide for adequate fresh water storage, and provide adequate plant security.
12

Noam Lior

Dual-Purpose plants: synergetic generation of power and desalination of water

The most economical large scale thermal water desalination systems are dual purpose plants that simultaneously produce electricity and typically MSF (Multi-Stage Flash distillation) seawater distillation. The original dual purpose plants used a Rankine steam power plant for generating electricity, the turbine of which (having an inlet temperature 500-600 C) was backpressure or extraction for supplying the heat to the desalination plant. Higher efficiency and better economics were obtained in later generation systems using a topping gas turbine (inlet temperature ~1200 C) with a bottoming back-pressure or extraction steam turbine in a combined cycle. While the prevalent heat source for dual purpose plants is gas or oil, any heat source of sufficient temperature, such as solar, geothermal, nuclear or some type of waste heat can be used RO water desalination plants are currently more efficient than thermal distillation ones, and they use electricity, not heat.
13

DESERTEC: An exciting plan to solar-generate electricity in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and transmit it for use in Europe and MENA, and also desalt water for MENA (originally recommended by the Club of Rome; from 2009 led by DII GmbH, an association of 12 companies, predominantly German)

http://www.dlr.de/tt/trans-csp

Noam Lior

14

Noam Lior

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS All components of the water use cycle should be considered
source

water impacts, the likely greenhouse and other polluting gas emissions from the energy requirements of the desalination process, embodied materials emissions potential impacts from concentrate management approaches, environmental health considerations in the product water
15

Noam Lior

Practical energy demand of desalination plants

Assuming t = 45%

Dual purpose plants (thermal) consume (5.2 to 9.5 kWh exergy)/(m3 produced fresh water)

Gained Output Ratio = GOR =

tons of produced fresh water ton of used heating steam

R. Semiat, Energy Issues in Desalination Processes. Environmental Science & Technology, Vol. 42, 16 No. 22, 8193-8201, 2008.

Price of desalted water

Comparative Total Cost Data for the Desalination SW RO Annualized capital costs Parts/maintenance Chemicals Labor Membranes (life not specified) Thermal energy Electrical energy ($0.05 k/Wh) 0.15 0.03 0.07 0.10 0.03 SW MSF 0.29 0.01 0.05 0.08 0.00 0.27a 0.19

Noam Lior

SW MED 0.22 0.01 0.08 0.08 0.00 0.27a 0.06

Prices are site and situation specific depend much on government financing and subsidies Depend much on cost of energy and its strong fluctuations Proper payment for externalities In comparison, municipal water prices are between 0 and ~$4/m3, usually < ~$1m3

0.00 0.23

Total ($/m3) 0.61 0.89 0.72 a The costs of thermal energy are likely exaggerated because offpeak electricity costs, cogeneration, or the use of waste energy are not considered in this analysis. SOURCE: GWI (2006a).
17

Noam Lior The new imperative: sustainable desalination

The past goal was to produce water reliably at a low enough cost, where the cost is unfortunately still in many cases based primarily on capital investment in the plant, operating costs for energy, materials and labor, and profit if a private company produces the water. Desalination based on this approach has recently come under strong criticisms for being unsustainable, and for creating long-term problems which are not considered in the costing and the choice of the entire process, e.g.:

Unrealistically low pricing of the energy, as done in many oil-rich countries Unrealistically low pricing of the water, as done in many countries Little care of the effluents, which contain highly concentrated seawater (also warm in distillation plants) that may have even far-reaching effects on oceans, various additives that are harmful to the environment and health, heavy metals, as well as the driving power plant emissions Damage to the eco-system at the plant intake

Desalination allows the development of new regions, which may be unsustainable to begin with. Legislation already exists in some places about restricting/penalizing such unsustainable attributes, and is likely to results in at least a real added cost (but that is insufficient because the cost is in captive markets likely to simply be passed along to the customer while the abuse continues). There is urgent need to implement well-analyzed sustainable desalination; also an opportunity to introduce new processes and products to that end.
18

Noam Lior

Conclusions, Recommendations, and Predictions (1/2)

Desalination is vitally important for water-stressed regions that can not import fresh water and is an important supplement elsewhere In reverse osmosis the energy demand has remarkably been reduced close to the thermodynamic limits, and innovations in distillation process are leading to lower energy demand Important goals for desalination in general:

Water cost reduction: reduce plant, supplies and externalities costs and increase energy efficiency robustness improvement developing lower cost, higher life and less polluting materials understanding the environmental impacts of desalination and developing approaches to minimize these impacts relative to other water supply Developing and adopting a rigorous overall sustainable 19 development approach, including water conservation consideration

Noam Lior

Conclusions, Recommendations, and Predictions (2/2)

Membrane processes should be improved by

mitigating fouling through pretreatment; developing high-permeability, fouling-resistant, highrejection, oxidant-resistant, longer life membranes preventing scale deposition at higher temperatures, better energy regeneration higher transport coefficients.

Distillation processes can be improved by

Environmental and social impacts must be understood, recognized, and significantly mitigated R&D is extremely deficient and governments must invest since the industry has shown little interest Desalination will continue to increase rapidly
20