Although also pol-luted to some extent, it is a future source of fresh water as desalination is the future process to produce this valuable good quality water.. DESALINATION PROCESSES Wh
Trang 1D DESALINATION
INTRODUCTION
Our planet, the earth or gaia, is a water place Water
occu-pies 70% of the total earth’s area, about 360 10 12 m 2 ,
and the total water volume that covers the earth’s surface
very large water reservoir, nevertheless practically, these
huge amounts of water are not directly usable, as 97% of
this water is the seawater of the open seas and oceans and
10 18 m 3 From these 3.0% fresh water reserves only a
por-tion (0.014%) is in liquid form in rivers, lakes and wells
directly available to us for immediate use, the rest can be
found as glacier, icebergs and very deep water of geological
reservoirs
Fresh water, for all of historical times has been an
uncon-trollable happening of nature wherever and however found
In the Bible “good land” is described as one “of brooks of
water, of fountains, and depths that spring out of valleys and
hills,” for water is a precious source of development and
civ-ilization, because water and civilization are two inseparable
conceptions
From antiquity up to our times, rivers, seas, oases, and
oceans have attracted man to their shores As a rule, towns
and countries have grown along rivers Egypt for example
was considered as “the gift of the river.” Egypt is a typical
historical example of the influence of water to the birth and
development of a civilization
As a largely developed agricultural country, Egypt was
able to master the river and had most of the time such an
abundant harvest, that it became the main wheat-exporting
country in the whole Mediterranean The Egyptians learned
to determine the seasons of the year by the behaviour of the
river Inundation, Emergence of the fields and Drought were
their seasons The first calendar was created in this way and
out of this was derived the modern calendar
Unfortunately, fresh water, and even seawater has not
had our proper attention, respect and treatment Due to the
increase of population, especially in certain regions, and
the increase of living standards, water demand increased
exponentially, and wells or other fresh water sources run dry The great population increase multiplies the total withdrawal
In some areas twice or more as much water is being drawn out of the ground as sank into it, thus the water table drops every year a few meters and water shortage increases dra-matically, especially in dry years
In modern large civic centers, opening of the tap vides us with as much fresh water as we are able to waste The notion of lack of water is usually a matter we very seldom think of However, at the same time there are places where water is so scarce that there are serious problems of existence, as is the case these days in many places in Africa Generally it is not realized that fresh water represents only 3% of the total reserves in the world and that 75% of it is immobilized as ice Modern agriculture also requires con-siderable amounts of good water to meet increasing food requirements There is a tremendous requirement of water to run industrial plants, to produce all kinds of goods but also all kinds of polluting effluent
The quantity of water used varies from location to tion throughout the day and throughout the year, as many factors influence this variation The more important factors include the economics of a community, its geographic loca-tion, and the nearby availability of the water source or the transportation distance from the source
Climate is the most common cause of water lack or of water insufficiency Sparse rainfall to feed streams, wells and the soil for agricultural production of crops exhausts water reserves The most arid areas are the deserts, where
no rain exists and some underground waters most of the time are salty or brackish About 19% of the total land surface
of the earth on all continents but Europe, is covered by erts, which are surrounded by semi-arid lands where existing water is insufficient
Coastal deserts, where the lack of water is as high as
world, the greatest part of which is found in the Middle East, along the Persian Gulf, adjoining parts of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean The coastal deserts are divided into four main categories, according to their climatic conditions
Trang 2The tropical regions, where the temperature is about 30C
as in the Mediterranean coasts, where during warm periods
third type, with the moderate climatic conditions, is that of
the Mediterranean Sea and covers about 2650 km 2 . 1
Coastal deserts have an advantage over the interior
deserts They are climatically more pleasant, because they are
cooler in summer and warmer in winter Further, they have
advantages over the interior deserts from the desalination
point of view Coastal deserts are surrounded by abundant
sea water supply which is in the same level as the
desalt-ing installation, and thus the intake of water can be pumped
with less power consumption than the deep well salty or
brackish waters of the inland deserts The brine disposal is
also easy, without problems, as it is discharged directly into
the sea, whereas the disposal of brine in inland deserts may
create serious problems Also, coastal deserts are in favour
over the inland ones concurring the transportation of the
equipment and all other necessary supplies for a
desalina-Saudi Arabia
Some of the most attractive areas and beaches of the
world are almost devoid of water Not only is this living
space, and space for resort hotels lost, but, in some cases,
profitable resources cannot be exploited Thus, known
min-erals on Egypt’s Red Sea coast cannot be mined, and
fish-ing industries on South America’s Pacific coast, and other
places around the world, cannot be expanded for lack of
water These present major losses in the world supplies of
minerals and foods
WATER DEMAND AND USAGE
per year This amount is enough to provide, with good
qual-ity water, about 20 billion people, but this water is far from
evenly divided, with major shortages in some regions and
abundant quantities in other places
In a modern urban agglomeration, supply of water may
satisfy domestic, municipal and industrial demand, as well
as agricultural needs There are no standards of general
acceptance for the quality of water required by each group
of users Domestic demand includes all water consumed in
housekeeping and gardening A limit of 500 mg/L (ppm) for
total dissolved solids with a maximum of 250 mg/L for
chlo-ride and sulphate ions, respectively, is recommended by the
a large number of communities, which are still consuming
water containing up to 1000 mg/L total dissolved solids and
sometimes more Physiological changes may result from the
intake of large amounts of the main ions, as well as of some trace elements
Municipal requirements, beside the supply of water for domestic use, include all water needed by offices, public and commercial establishments, fire-fighting and irrigation of municipal parks Although the standards for the latter uses are not strictly the same, as for drinking water, in practice all municipal water requirements are identical to drinking water since it is nearly always supplied by the same piping system
A large variety of quality standards is involved in the use of industrial water, depending on its specific use They may vary from high-quality drinking water for food process-ing to completely demineralized water for specific uses Limitations of salt content may be imposed in some cases for process water Boiler feed water needs special treatment to minimize salt content and eliminate dissolved gases Cooling water also needs some treatment to meet the process require-ments River water and sea water can be used for cooling purposes and this is the usual practice in plants located on a river or near the seashore
About 70% of water withdrawn from the earth goes for agriculture purposes and the balance, 30%, for various uses,
as household and industrial process water Overirrigation the last years, brought salinization of the nearby water resources, affecting the soil and crop quality, as salts are accumulating
in the soil
Irrigation water quality, which includes also drinking water for animals, depends to a large extent on the nature of the soil, the crops and the climate The yield and quantity of some crops can be affected, not only by the total amount of dissolved solids, but also by the presence of certain specific salts Thus if desalinated water is to be used in certain places the make-up of the product water will be necessary
The water withdrawn per year and per capita, ing industry and agriculture is increasing by 8.5%, the main increase in the developed countries The USA consumes
a very poor African country, only 40 m 3 . 3
Meanwhile, the majority of fresh water streams are severely polluted, decreasing the quality water reserves Self decontamination is not feasible in many cases and, thus, treatment methods have to be applied to degrade at least some of the pollutants in the water On the other hand, sea water exist in huge amounts, given free Although also pol-luted to some extent, it is a future source of fresh water as desalination is the future process to produce this valuable good quality water
SEA WATER The seas and oceans are great sources of material available
to mankind, though their destiny is very low to be exploited, but high enough to make the water salty, unsuitable for drink-ing or processing purposes Not all the seas around the world have the same amount of total dissolved solids, the amount
of which range from 20,000 to 50,000 ppm
Trang 3and closed seas Over seventy elements have been detected
in seawater, some in very small to trace amounts Their
pro-portion in all oceans, independent of their concentration, is
almost stable. 4
The four main metals—sodium, magnesium, calcium and potassium—and their combining ions, chlorides, includ-ing the other halogens and bicarbonates, are presented in major and the minor elements in seawater
FIGURE 1 Panoramic view of the Al-Jubail Saudi Arabia, phase II, MSF desalination plant It is up to now the World
largest desalination installation totaling a capacity of 947,000 m 3 /d (250 Mgd) fresh water production Each unit has a
capacity of 23,500 m 3 /d (6.2 Mgd) The plant was built for the Saline Water Conversion Corporation, of Saudi Arabia
by the Japanese Companies of Sasakura and Mitsubishi (Courtesy Sasakura Engineering Co., Japan)
T
able 1 gives the total dissolved salt of various oceans
Trang 4Desalination eliminates the main elements from
sea-water, producing fresh water and concentrated brine,
almost saturated in the main salts, which are withdrawn to
the sea There are two main reasons that these salts are not
exploited The brine volumes are huge and cannot be
han-dled easily The present extraction technology is expensive
for the relatively cheap materials Nevertheless, there is
some industry exploiting, in part, the concentrated brine
(500 MUSGPO) of fresh water is produced by the various
sea-water is processed, so that the solids concentration of the
brine is doubled It is estimated that the recovery from the
withdrawn brine can be:
Magnesium 2,306.000 t/y Bromine 116.100 t/y
Calcium 728.000 t/y Copper 5.385 t/y
Potassium 659.000 t/y Uranium 5.385 t/y
Sulfate 4,855.000 t/y Gold 7.2 kg/y
Calcium and magnesium are the main elements that cause
scale formation Scales are formed and precipitate inside
desalination equipment simultaneously with other suspended
solids content in the feed water sea or brackish These als precipitate in areas favored for deposition In distillation plants these are the heat exchangers and, in reverse osmosis, the semipermeable membranes, cause the problems These deposits are categorised in two main types, the sludge which
materi-is soft and can be easily washed out, and the scale which materi-is hard, adheres to heat transfer surfaces and can be removed only by plant shutdown
Brackish waters are classified as waters with total solved solids content ranging from 3,000 ppm to 20,000 ppm The elements vary widely, depending on the rocks and soil coming in contact with the water In some brackish waters large amounts of calcium sulfate are present up to satura-tion conditions, making the water bitter and unsuitable for any use
DESALINATION PROCESSES When all other possibilities to use existing natural water resources are exhausted or to augment fresh water supply
by conventional methods fail, then desalting of seawater, or brackish water and/or of polluted water reserves might give the answer to local water problems The cost of desalting has been drastically reduced over the past several years This is
TABLE 1 Total Dissolved Solids in Various Seas
Northern Adriatic 29.0 29,000 Kara Bogar (Caspian) 164.0 164,000
TABLE 2 Ionic Composition of Main Elements in Seawater 6
Trang 5the result of the combined effort of scientists and engineers
However, it should not be forgotten that desalted water is an
industrial product and its cost can never compete with the
cost of natural fresh water supplies
The largest desalination plant is Nature The hydrological
cycle on earth begins by desalination of surface waters As
the sun’s energy evaporates the water from the oceans and the
land surface waters, the vapors condense again on the earth’s
surface, as desalted water, stored as snow, ice or through the
soil returns to the rivers and seas This water is the vital liquid
for all creatures on the earth
The importance of water, as a matter of life, is quoted as
far back as there are records in history We read in the Old
Testament: “Moses brought the sons of Israel from the Red
Sea and they went into the desert of Shur They marched three
days in the wilderness and could not find water to drink And
when they arrived to Merra they could not drink the waters
of Merra, for they were bitter Therefore, he named this place
‘bitterness.’ And the people murmured against Moses, saying:
What shall we drink? And Moses cried onto the Lord And
the Lord sweded a wood, which when he had cast into the
what kind of wood this could be, but is the first known in
his-tory, technical desalination
The effort of a desalination process is to separate one
of the most common, and most useful and yet most unusual
material—the water from the one of the next common
mate-rial, the salt Hundreds of processes have been proposed,
based on the various properties of water and its saline
solu-tions Nevertheless only a few of these methods have reached
such an advanced state of technology to be considered as safe
processes for the commercial conversion of saline waters
into fresh Distillation processes, reverse osmosis and
elec-trodialysis or in some cases combination of two processes
The expectations, connected with freezing processes, could
not be met with current freezing technology in large scale
industrial application
The required separation may be of water from salt, or of
salt from water Thus the desalination processes can be
classi-fied, according to the operation reference parameter as follow:
vapor compression
Distillation is the most developed process of removing water from a saline solution It is applied up to very large capacities with various types of evaporators and accounts for about 59.4% of the total world plant capacity. 5
The latent heat of changing phase is an important factor in the overall process economics, but the degree of salinity of the raw water is of no importance Multistage flash distillation and multi-effect evaporation are reduc-ing considerably the economic effect of the latent heat of vaporization
Reverse osmosis uses mechanical energy, as
pres-sure, to drive the water out of the solution through permeable membranes The applied pressure must be higher than osmotic pressure, its value depending from the salt content of the brackish or seawater solution The necessary counterpressure in reverse osmosis depends greatly upon the salt content of the raw water and imposes constraints
semi-on membrane life and performance, but also varying energy consumption according to the salinity of the raw water Membrane life is an important cost factor
Today reverse osmosis plants account, worldwide, for
19.5% for capacities over 4000 m 3 /d
Electrodialysis is the most developed process for
eliminating salts from aqueous solutions The economics depend closely on the salt content of the raw water, as the consumption of electric energy is related to the total dis-solved solids removed from the solution Electrodialysis may, therefore, preferably be applied for the purification of brackish waters Reversal electrodialysis is a modification,
the production of high-quality water and minimizes the rejection of brine
Trang 6Today electrodialysis accounts for 5.7% of plants with
4000 m 3 /d
Freezing processes found no commercial application
though the simplicity of the method They failed because the
size of produced ice was very small and half of the fresh
water was used to wash out the salt from ice surface,
render-ing the method uneconomical
Independently from the method or procedure for sea or
brackish water desalination the operation of a desalination
plant includes some general steps to be followed Figure 2
gives the procedures before and after the main
desalina-tion step
ENERGY SOURCES
Running a desalination plant many expenses arise, the
high-est of which is energy cost In a normal chemical plant energy
cost is low, only 1 to 5% and, in some extreme occasion, 10%
of the total operation cost On the contrary, desalination is a high energy consuming procedure and the cost of necessary minimum energy to run the plant is 40% of the total cost The main energy sources, depending on the method, are low pressure stream and electricity, two energy sources easily available in any industrialized region Few other energy sources are given at lower cost or free of charge These alter-native energies are suitable for small capacity plants and/or for remote and arid regions, where fuel and electricity are not available or the cost of fuel transportation renders its use uneconomic
Alternative energy sources include geothermal energy
when and where is available, all kinds of waste heat and waste heat from nuclear plants
Renewable energy sources include wind energy, tidal
energy, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) and, above all, the abundant solar energy
Waste heat is available from chemical industry, power plants and nuclear power plants in large amounts, but in low heat content Wind and tidal energy are available in certain specified regions, transforming the corresponding energy into electricity OTEC takes advantage of the temperature difference between the ocean surface and about the 500 m depth of the tropical regions Solar energy is for the time being the most promising renewable energy In the earth’s sunny regions solar radiation is very intensive though also very spread out, thus the capture of solar energy depends on large areas
Although solar, wind and tidal energy are natural forces given free, the corresponding equipment for transformation
of these energies into a usuable form are yet very expensive and the yield very low
DISTILLATION PROCESSES Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, wrote: “Salt water, when it turns into vapor, becomes sweet, and the vapor does not form salt water again when it condenses.” Sailors have used simple evaporation apparatus to make drinking water for almost 400 years, and ocean going ships have tradition-ally used evaporators, often multiple-effect, as an accessory
to steam boilers
The simplest way to evaporate water is the natural one, using solar heat Sun is a free inexhaustible source of energy However, this energy has not been captured and stored at its most concentrated form as yet The way to use solar energy for desalination purposes depends on the desalination pro-cess The simplest and most common method is the direct use of the solar energy in specific equipment called “solar stills” which act simultaneously as converters of solar energy
to heat and as distillers. 8
Indirect use of solar energy, called “solar assisted” or
“solar driven” desalination, captures the solar radiation using one of the modern procedures which transform the energy into either heat or electrical power Horizontal tube, multiple-effect (HTME), multi-stage-flash (MSF) and thermal vapor compression (TVC) distillation methods are coupled to the
MATERIAL STORAGE
DESALINATION
INSTALLATION
VAPOR, POWER
CONDENSATE BRINE
POST TREATMENT
POWER STATION
FIGURE 2 Flow diagram of the main procedures to be followed
in the operation of a desalination plant.
Trang 7heat source, though reverse osmosis (RO), electrodialysis
(ED) and mechanical vapor compression (MVC) to the
elec-trical power produced from the sun’s radiation. 9
As the incidence of solar radiation varies over the day,
the time of the year, the degree of cloudy weather and the
geographic location, conventional solar evaporation can
never be a steady state operation Moreover, convectional
solar distillation is a single effect process and is
character-ized by the thermal disadvantages of single stage operation
The intensity of solar radiation reaching the earth varies
come directly from the sun, but sometimes as much as 10%
of it comes as scattered light, even when the atmosphere is
unobstructed by clouds In cloudy weather the total radiation
is greatly reduced and most of the light that passes through
may be scattered light
The solar radiation striking a horizontal surface is
great-est at noon, as the sun’s rays pass through the atmosphere
with a minimum length of passage through the air In the
morning and the afternoon the rays are subject to increased
absorption and scattering Considering the latitude,
maxi-mum radiation is at the equator Hence the radiation
inten-sity depends on the hour of the day, the day of the year, and
the clarity of the atmosphere for a given location, as well
as of the latitude of the earth at the point of observation
These limitations of the solar radiation render solar
distilla-tion method and solar driven desalinadistilla-tion a nonsteady state
operation except if solar energy storage is provided, which
in general increases installation costs
The daily production of conventional solar distillation
is low, due to low performance of the stills Depending on
the intensity of solar radiation, the day of the month and the
month of the year the fresh water production ranges from 1.5
to 5.51/m 2 d (0.036 to 0.130 gal/ft 2 d). 10
Increasing feedwater temperature the daily productivity
increases as well This can be done by connecting a solar still
with a solar collector or by using the condensate from low
pressure steam Many other methods have been proposed, to
augment the efficiency of solar stills, nevertheless without
any success due to increase of the corresponding costs
To calculate the efficiency or the daily productivity
of the solar stills have been proposed many mathematical
models Here two general equations are given: One concerns
the operation of a conventional solar still and the second the
productivity of a solar still connected to a solar collector
The daily output of a stagnant solar still is given by the
Much material is required to construct a solar still: glass
or plastic for the cover, black basin surface to absorb the solar radiation, material for the basin, usually concrete or plastic, pumps and piping—metal or preferably plastic, for the feed water and the fresh water distribution. 13,14,15
Total cost of installation and operation of solar distillation plants is not very high if land is given free They need large condensing areas and are vulnerable to storms However, energy is free, except pumping, operation is simple, and maintenance cost very low
Although the advantage of cost-free energy is partly offset by increased amortization cost and the large installa-tion area, distillation with solar energy remains a favorable process for small-capacity water desalting at remote loca-tions where there is considerable solar radiation Most solar distillation plants are being (or will be) erected in less devel-oped countries or in areas where there are limited mainte-nance facilities
Solar energy for evaporation was first used on a major scale about 1872 in Chile, where a glass-roofed unit had 4,400 m 2 to make 22.4 m 3 /d (⬃6000 gpd) in a mining camp. 16
Today many units, glass covered or plastic ones, are installed
in small capacities world wide, mainly in arid and remote glass covered, yet in operation, in Porto Santo (Madeira) Portugal, with an installation area of 1200 m 2 . 17
It seems to be very simple as a method, and really it
is, because theoretically solar energy can replace any other energy source From a technical point of view this is not yet totally feasible because either the corresponding technology
is not fully developed or the market is still very expensive Both procedures, solar distillation and solar driven desal-ination, depend on local insolation rates which vary from site
to site for the same region, from the time of the day, the time
of the year and the cloudy weather making desalination an unsteady state operation Heat storage, if possible, improves productivity by extending operation during the nighttime or during cloudy days but also affects directly the economics of the method However, for certain locations as remote, arid
or semi-arid regions, where the small communities are poor and where the techniques and tools of water production and distribution developed in industrialized areas are not always appropriate to be used, solar desalination is admitted as the most suitable process
The other way of using solar energy for desalination purposes is the collection of solar energy by solar collectors
or concentrators, with subsequent conversion of the solar energy to heat or electricity This solar assisted desalination is expanding rapidly and many installations have been erected
in commercial but as yet small capacity sizes
The simplest thermal conversion type of collector is a solar pond A solar pond is a shallow body of water in which
a stabilizing salinity gradient prevents thermal convection, thereby allowing the pond to act as a solar trap The merit
of solar ponds lies in their ability to collect solar energy in large scale and provide long-term heat storage This long-term storage provides also increased flexibility of heat use They can operate at all latitudes and are estimated to be less areas Figure 3 is the photograph of a solar distillation plant,
Trang 8expensive than flat plate collectors per unit area installed and
per unit of thermal energy delivered Solar ponds, being
low-grade heat source, can be competitive with convectional heat
sources in many applications
Flat-plate collectors, evacuated tube collectors and
focus-sing collectors are used to produce hot water or steam as the
heat medium for the distillation units For reverse osmosis or
electrodialysis units, photovoltaic devices are used or
ther-mal conversion systems, e.g., central receivers, to drive the
turbine generator
A very important aspect of the solar assisted desalination
process is the cost of energy and water produced However,
experience has shown that cost estimates are different
every-where Labour, material cost, etc depend on local
circum-stances, so the cost of water is not the same at all places
Solar assisted desalination capacity is only a very
small percentage, about 0.80%, of the total world capacity
of convectional-fossil fuel fired desalination plants A part,
0.60% is coupled to collectors or photovoltaic devices and
0.13% are wind-driven plants The total capacity of worldwide
solar-driven desalination plants is only about 15,250 m 3 /d, and
wind driven as low as 2,530 m 3 /d. 5
irst known sketch for solar lation equipment. 18
Distillation process, operated with conventional energy
sources, i.e., low pressure steam, are applied up to very large capacities by using various types of evaporators and are clas-sified accordingly as follow:
Multiple-effect evaporator (ME)
Vertical tube evaporators VTE, falling or climbing type
Horizontal tube evaporators HTE
Multi-stage-flash evaporator (MSF) Vapor compression evaporator (VC)
Thermal vapor compression TVC Vacuum vapor compression VVC Mechanical vapor compression MVC The term “evaporation” in the desalination refers espe-cially to the vaporization of water from an aqueous saline solution, as brackish or seawater, where the solid constitu-ents are practically nonvolatile, in the range of working
FIGURE 3 Photograph of the Solar distillation plant in Porto Santo, Madeira, Portugal It is the only solar plant in
operation in Europe Has a total evaporating area of 1,200 m 2 , and consists from two different kinds of solar stills, of
the assymetrical type The Greek design developed at the T.U of Athens and the design developed by the university
of Berlin.
Figure 4 presents the f
Trang 9temperatures and pressures Thus, water alone is vaporized,
which is the main product, and the dissolved solids remain
in the residual liquid, the brine
In the chemical industry, when an evaporation process
is applied, the water vapors are usually discarded and the
emphasis is given to the recuperation of the dissolved solids
In desalination the term “distillation” predominates over
the correct term “evaporation.” The process is performed in
evaporators, where heat is supplied to the solution, to change
phase
The productivity is expressed either as the net
evapo-ration or “gain output ratio” (GOR), i.e., the kilos of
pro-duced distilled water per kilo of boiler steam used, (kg/kg)
or as performance ratio R It is usually prefered, instead of
the GOR, to use the term performance ratio which defines
the mass of distillate produced per 2326 kJ (gal/1000 BTU)
of heat input to the brine heater in case of MSF
distilla-tion or to the first effect in case of multiple-effect
evapo-rators The latter definition is thermodynamically more
accurate, as it refers to the enthalpy of the steam instead to
the mass
Thermodynamic considerations lead to a common
char-acteristic of all distillation process, that the percentage of
evaporated water with respect to the circulating seawater is
as much larger as is the difference between the maximum
and minimum temperature of the saline solution As the
minimum temperature is defined by the temperature of the
incoming seawater, enlarging of the temperature difference can only be obtained by increasing the initial maximum temperature of the salt water feed Limitations due to the appearance of phenomena like scale formation and corro-sion, which are becoming more important at higher tempera-tures, define an allowable maximum temperature for each distillation process An appropriate pretreatment of the salt water is necessary to make an increase of the feed water tem-perature possible
The economics of the distillation process might be affected by the following parameters:
pre-treatment
Corrosion may increase fixed changes, when more expensive materials of construction must be used
Multiple-Effect Distillation (ME)
Theoretically, in single-effect distillation 1 kg of distillate will be produced for every kg of steam consumed and the gain output ratio of the plant will be 1 In fact, despite pre-heating of the feed, a large part of the enthalpy of the vapors,
FIGURE 4 The first historically known solar distillation equipment, according to Giovanni Batista De La Porta The sun evaporates the water inside the glass vessels and distilled water is collected beneath the vessels “De distillations,” Libri IX, Rome 1608.
Trang 10evolved in the single-effect evaporator, is lost in the
con-denser A better heat recuperation would be obtained if the
heat, released by the condensing vapor, is not rejected in a
condenser, but is used to heat the brine of a second
evapora-tor and so on
This leads to the concept of multiple-effect distillation,
where the vapors from one effect are used as the heat source
of the next effect, as long as the difference in temperature
between the condensing vapor and the solution is high
enough to act as the driving force in the evaporation
pro-cess, each effect being at progressively lower temperature
and pressure Vapor condensing because of lower boiling
temperature, in each effect, produces fresh water as
distil-late, whereas the vapor from the final effect is condensed by
a circulating seawater cooling stream
Theoretically, an additional kg of distillate would be
obtained in each consecutive effect for the same kg of
steam initially introduced into the first effect and the plant
gain output ratio would be equal to the number of effects in
operation However, this is not true in practice Part of the
condensation heat to be recovered is lost to the atmosphere,
in design features and in the differences of temperature used
as the plant’s driving force
Multiple-effect distillation process uses evaporators
which are modified successors of evaporators that have been
used in sugar and other process industries for more than 100
years and have been in use for seawater distillation about
90 years The latter were originally built for shipboard use,
the main requirements being for compactness, simplicity in
operation and reliability In land based industrial
evapora-tor plants the requirements are mainly directed to the cost
of product water with emphasis on cheaper materials of
construction, high boiling temperatures, efficient descaling
methods and the use of the cheapest type of evaporator
Previously multiple-effect distillation was second in
importance of the distillation process, as medium capacity
plants but day hardly is applied Worldwide capacity of ME
plants for units producing more than 100 m 3 /d of fresh water,
is only 765,143 m 3 /day or 4.1% of total world capacity. 5
Long Tube Vertical Evaporator, LTVE Long tube
evapo-rators consist of a series of long tubes arranged vertically
inside the evaporator shell Seawater feed may be from the
top or from the bottom, called respectively falling or rising
film LTV evaporators
In the falling film evaporator seawater is introduced at
the top and the incoming seawater flows across an upper
tube plate and is equally distributed to the tubes, and flows
downward by gravity as a thin film The principal advantage
of the VTE process is that high heat-transfer can be achieved,
which considerably reduces the required heat-transfer
sur-face area This forward feed is the usual method of feeding a
multiple-effect-evaporator
The VTE rising film is similar to falling film evaporator
except that seawater is introduced at the bottom of the first
effect, thus reducing the overall pumping requirements Heat
transfer in the VTE evaporators is increased by using fluted
tubes, which enhance heat transfer
Steam condenses outside the tubes, forming also a thin film of distillate Surface tension forces are created, which are inversely proportional to the flute radius This causes the condensate film to drain from the crests to the grooves, so that a very thin condensate layer is remaining on the crests, which promotes heat transfer
The flow sheet of a typical multiple-effect vertical tube
a feed heater C which uses the product vapors as heating medium in the form of distilled water or vapor condensate Vapors produced in the first effect condense outside the tubes
of effect 2 and the brine is pumped from each effect to the top
of the next The average efficiency K of each effect is ally between 0.85 and 0.95 Concerning N effects in a LTE system, as in Figure 5, the GOR is given by the equation:
only 14.9, and it will attain a maximum of 19.0 for an
There are some economic limitations increasing the number of effects The investment costs and consequently the fixed charges are increasing almost linearly with the number
of effects The costs of steam and water fall off rapidly at first, but the savings diminish progressively The total cost
of operating an evaporator leads to an optimum number of effects, at the point where the sum of fixed costs and the cost
of utilities shows a minimum The most probable number of effects will be between 10 and 20
The Multiple-Effect Horizontal-Tube Evaporator The
(MEHT) type of evaporator operates on the same principle
as the VTE evaporator, but the steam condenses on the inside
of the horizontal tubes imparting its latent heat of sation to the brine, which cascades and evaporates over the outside of the tubes The brine falls to the next effect by gravity and the vapors formed in one effect are used in the next effect The horizontal-tube evaporator eliminates the pumps required for each effect of the VTE brine circulation,
conden-by an arrangement in which the effects are stacked vertically
on the top of each other This compact arrangement of the
ME evaporators, called also multiple-effect stack (MES), is constructed in low capacity units and though there are many advantages, it accounts for only 1% of the world capacity
19 effect-horizontal-tube evaporators are suitable to operate with solar energy plants
VAPOR COMPRESSION (VC) Vapor compression (VC) distillation takes advantage of the latent heat of the vapors produced in the process Vapor produced by evaporation from a salt solution is superheated because of the boiling point elevation of the solution and distillation plant is shown in Figure 5 In each effect is adapted
In Figure 6 a typical HTE evaporator is presented
Trang 11has a lower pressure than the saturation pressure of pure
water It will, therefore, in losing the superheat, condense
at a lower temperature than the boiling point of the
solu-tion If this vapor is compressed to a higher pressure, the
energy input results in a rise in temperature With sufficient
rise in pressure and temperature, the recompressed vapor
might be used as a source of heat for evaporating the same
salt solution
Heat needs to be supplied to the system only at the
start-up for elevating the temperature of the solution to the boiling
point Once boiling has started, it is maintained by the
exter-nal supply of power and no more by the addition of heat as
the cycle is repeated
Vapor compression distillation accounts only 3.7% of
total world wide desalination capacities and about 6.2% of
distillation processes, for units producing 100 m 3 /d or more
fresh water Daily productivity is 686,500 m 3 /d. 5
The energy source may be mechanical or electrical
power to drive the compressors for mechanical vapor
com-pression Thermal vapor compression, or
“thermocompres-sion,” uses high pressure steam to compress the vapors to
higher temperatures Vacuum vapor compression uses
elec-tric or waste heat to reheat the vapors, circulating by the use
of a blower
Mechanical Vapor Compression (MVC) The MVC process
uses compressors to reheat the vapors to higher tures High or low pressure compressors are used, depending
tempera-on the capacity of the system As high capacity plants have many stages, the necessary temperature is higher and they are high pressure compressors Low capacity plants use low pressure compressors The higher the compression pressure, the smaller is the volume of the compressor and that of the vapor Due to high temperatures, high capacity MVC plants are prone to scale formation
cal vapor compression evaporator and the T-S diagram of the
Thermocompression Thermocompression uses high sure steam ejector to re-heat the vapors released from the compression diagram
Another type of thermal vapor compression operates under vacuum inside the evaporation chamber The low pres-sure vapors are circulated by a vapor blower and heated by electric heater, hot water or hot gas, according to the avail-able heat source A suitable adaptor for the various heat sources is necessary
FRESH WATER SEAWATER FEED
BRINE DOWN
BLOW- ONATOR
DECARB-COOLING WATER OUT
SER
CONDEN-COOLING WATER IN
VENT BRINE BRINE
D D
F
2 1
FIGURE 5 Flow diagram of a multiple-effect-evaporator for seawater desalination, of the falling type Seawater is preheated in the heaters
C and pumped on the top of the first evaporator No 1, from where falls down inside the vertically oriented tubes B A thin film of brine is formed inside (detail A and B) In the first effect steam from the boiler forms a thin film of condensate outside the tubes In the following effects the vapors of each effect condenses outside the tubes of the next effect The rest of the space of the evaporator is then filled with water vapors The brine accumulates in the bottom of the evaporator from where is fed to the next effect by the pumps D A distributor cap
is fitted on each tube to ensure even distribution of the brine The produced fresh water is used to preheat the seawater fed in the heaters C Part of the seawater is acid treated and a decarbonator F, is used for the removal of air and CO2.
Figure 7 presents the flow-sheet of a four-stage
Trang 12FIGURE 6 Flow-diagram of a multiple-effect-horizontal tube
evaporator The effects are vertically oriented, one on top of the
other This arrangement is compact and is called
multiple-effect-stack type (MES) distillation equipment 19 Preheated seawater
feed is sprayed, F, onto the outer surface O of the evaporator tubes
in the first effect at the top of the column, T, where a portion of
seawater is evaporated by the heating steam S The remaining
seawater is collected at the bottom B, of the first effect and then
sprayed onto the outer surfaces of the second effect where another
portion of seawater is evaporated, being heated by the vapor
gen-erated in the first effect The gengen-erated vapor is delivered through
a mist eliminator section, E The vapor itself condenses into fresh
water in the side section W The cycle is repeated in each
succes-sive effect up to the last one Vapors generated in the last effect is
condensed in a heat rejection condenser C.
Multi-Stage-Flash (MSF) Distillation
When saline water is heated to a temperature slightly below
its boiling point at a given pressure and then introduced into a
chamber where a sufficiently lower pressure exists, explosive
boiling will occur Bubbles are evolving from the whole mass
of the liquid and part of the water will evaporate until
equilib-rium with its vapor at the prevailing pressure is reached
This evaporation lowers the temperature of the
remain-ing brine The liquid may then be passed into another
cham-ber at an even lower pressure, where it flashes again to vapor
If a higher rate of saline water circulation is supplied, an increased proportion of flash will occur The increased flow rate may be considered as a means of obtaining increased evaporative yield in a system without increasing the evapo-rating surface It is, therefore, equivalent to diminishing the evaporating surface
Flashing of vapor requires a finite residence time of the liquid in the evaporation chamber in order to achieve near equilibrium conditions For a given flow rate the residence time is determined by the chamber length Mass-transfer rates in two-phase flow depend on the interfacial geometry
of the two phases and on the degree of turbulence They accordingly determine the residence time required and thus the size of the flashing chamber
On the other hand, the length of the flashing chamber must be sufficient to achieve the required temperature rise
of the incoming seawater under the acceptable maximum velocity inside the condensing tubes As there are limita-tions for both brine and feed-water flow rates, the width of the flashing chamber becomes the important determinant for
a vacuum vapor compression unit
MSF is the most widely applied distillation process, especially for large units, and despite the thermodynamic advantages of ME evaporation, all major plants installed are of the MSF principle because of the simplicity and reliability of the process It accounts for 51.5% of the world desalination capacity and 86.9% of total distillation processes The capacity of MSF plants capable of produc-
or 71.7% of world desalination capacity for desalting plants
Multi-stage-distillation process, as applied in large scale desalting of seawater, may be considered as consisting of three sections in handling heat: the heat input section, usu-ally named brine heater, by condensing external steam; the heat recovery section, in which the heat of the evaporation
is recovered in the condensers at the various stages; and the heat rejection section, which maintains the thermodynamic process by reducing temperature and pressure and accounts for the last stages of the plant
MSF distillation plants operate with recirculation part of the brine Recirculation can be applied so far as the concen-tration of the scale-forming compounds does not reach, after the evaporation, the critical point It is a disadvantage of this design that the brine concentration at the hottest stages of the plant is much higher than the concentration of dissolved solids in the seawater The fact limits the maximum brine temperature of the process
Operating with this cycle arrangement, the maximum
of the low pressure differential available at the deep vacuum conditions prevalent in the last stages
The total number of stages is affected by the initial and final brine temperatures, as well as by the necessary increasing the plant size Figure 9 presents a flow diagram of
Trang 13temperature gradient between stages, to maintain the
ther-modynamic cycle However, there are practical limits in the
excessive increase of the number of stages The additional
investment to provide further stages to the plant should be
reasonable with respect to the savings of heat obtained by the
same stages In large multi-stage flash evaporators for
desalt-ing of seawater, the cost of the heat transfer tubes is a very
important part of the total construction cost The
tempera-ture drop in each stage and the difference between brine-inlet
temperature at the first stage and the discharge temperature at
the last stage are the main controlling parameters of the MSF
distillation process In a cascading flashing stream of an MSF
evaporator, the combined heat capacity of the flashing brine
and distillate streams equals that of the recirculating brine
and the temperature rise of the recirculating brine equals the
temperature drop of the flashing stream
The number of stages in an MSF distillation plant
is related to the performance of ratio An increase in the
number of heat-recovery stages will generally result in a higher performance ratio for a given product-water output and in a decrease of steam consumption at the brine heater The performance ratio R can be correlated to the number
of stages by the following relation:
Vapor bubbles almost explode to carry entrained brine to the
temperatures per stage reduces flash violence and entrainment but this increases the number of stages to 40 or more and also increases equipment costs and inefficiency, which increase capacity and material costs
FIGURE 7 Flow diagram of a typical 4-stage, mechanical vapor compression plant Incoming seawater feed is preheated in the exchanger H, by the produced freshwater and the blowdown brine The vapors released in the first stage are flashing to the second stage and
heat-so go on up to the 4th (or to the nth stage) The vapor from the last stage is compressed in the compresheat-sor C Electric power is generated in
a turbine to drive the compressor C Compressed steam is circulated through the tubes of the condenser B, where it condenses, giving the heat to the evaporating seawater Released vapors are used as heating medium in the second stage, etc The condensate, i.e., the produced freshwater, leaving the flashing chambers F is collected after further cooling in the heat-exchanger H and brine is rejected.
brine blowdown
pre-heated
distilledwater
seawaterfeed
Tf
Tf
seawaterdistilled water
Trang 14Temperature differences between brine and vapor streams
besides boiling point elevation
w diagram is given of a flash evaporator and the temperature profile across the plant
multi-stage-flash chambers Configuration No 1, with long tubes is
pre-ferred by American construction companies The cross type
No 2, is usually preferred by European contractors
Combined Distillation Plants
Significant economic advantages may be expected from
combining different distillation processes, especially where
desalting plants are designed with large capacities Studies and
design experience indicate that the combined system possesses
substantial advantages in cost compared with the unit form of
multi-stage plant of the same capacity The savings in cost are
due primarily to lower capital investment, and lower
opera-tional and maintenance costs A further advantage of the
com-bined plant is its high operational stability at varying loads
Many designs have been proposed and many
combi-nations have been tried, mainly for small capacity or pilot
size plants Commercial application used the vertical
tube-multi-stage-flash (VTE/MSF) and the vertical tube-vapor
compressor processes Tubes with fluted surfaces are used
in the vertical tube evaporator plants to obtain enhanced heat transfer performance The heat recovery section of the multi-stage-flash plant is used as feed preheater of the verti-cal tube plant, which is the main evaporator for the distil-late production The combined vapor compression-vertical tube evaporator process uses the heat recovery section of the multi-stage-flash as preheater for the vapor compression plant as it is more efficient than the heat-exchangers in the single vapor compression process
Scale Formation and Its Prevention
Formation of scale deposits on and fouling of heat transfer surfaces is one of the most serious problems of distillation equipment operating with sea or brackish water As the scale deposits lower the efficiency of heat transfer surfaces and increase the pressure drop, pretreatment of feed water is necessary to prevent the deposition of scale
As the salt concentration increases during progressive evaporation, the critical point may be reached at which the solubility limit of scale-forming compounds contained in the feed water, is exceeded and formation of scale occurs The term scale is applied particularly to describe hard, adherent, normally crystalline deposits on the heat transfer
FEED WATER 43.5°C
43°C 2nd EFFECT
PRODUCT WATER
ANTI-SCALE CHEMICAL INJECTION
SEAWATER SUPPLY VENT EJECTOR
A
C T
FIGURE 8 A two effect reheat or thermal compression unit The low pressure, low temperature vapors from the second effect are sucked by the steam jet ejector A, driven by a small quantity of high pressure boiler steam, and delivers a hotter compressed mixture of stream and vapors to the condenser tubes T of the first effect The seawater feed is sprayed onto the outside of the horizontal condenser tubes T Part of the rejected brine from the last stage is used as feed to the first stage Condensate, or product fresh water is collected in the last stage chamber C and distributed through the pump P (Courtesy Sasakura Engineering Co., Ltd., Japan.)
In Figure 10 the flo
Figure 11 gives the two arrangements of the
Trang 15multi-stage-surfaces Three simultaneous factors are required for the
for-mation of the scale:
of further scale deposition
3 Sufficient contact time of the solution and the
nucleus
Under certain conditions a soft, amorphous material,
called sludge, may be deposited or remain suspended in the
brine and is generally more easily removed than hard scale
If the ions contained in seawater are combined in the
form in which they usually deposit, the resulting compounds
assuming that hydrogen carbonate decomposes to
hydrogen carbonate ion decomposes and calcium carbonate
is formed
A second type of scale, called acid scale, is due to three
hemihy-drate and the dihyhemihy-drate CaSO 4 · 2H 2 O, or gypsum While the precipitation of CaCO 3 and Mg(OH) 2 is mainly affected by
CO32– concentration, pH and temperature affect the solubility of calcium sulfates in addition to the concentrations of other ions
tem-perature ranges of interest The solubility increases in chloride solutions, as the concentration approaches 4 to 5% chloride and then decreases to values comparable to those in chloride free water as the chloride concentration becomes 10 to 15% Maximum brine temperature provided in the design, maxi-mum allowable brine concentration and brine recirculation rate are also affected by the formation of scale These operating variables and the plant availability are closely tied to the eco-nomics of the process as the production rate is generally low-ered Periodic plant shutdowns for descaling would be required either by an acid clean or, in extreme cases, by mechanical cleaning of the tubes Incrustation allowances to reduce the frequency of shut-downs are made in designing evaporators, which are provided with a sufficient larger heat-exchange sur-face in order to maintain the design capacity The term fouling
is often extended to this type of admissible scaling
SCALE INHIBITOR FEEDWATER
FEED PREHEATER
BRINE
PRODUCT WATER
is raised, before it passes to the inside of the tubes T, where it condenses to form fresh water Most of the heat is thus effectively recycled
C, D, E, represent the auxilliary parts of heating which can be adapted to the main distillation unit U, according to their availability (Courtesy Sasakura Engineering Co., Ltd., Japan.)