To date, the average cost of desalted water using msf has been reduced to about 0. In hotter countries where there is more solar energy available, the potential for using the technology to produce low cost desalination systems is even more significant. Researchersfrom the university of alexandria have developed a cheaper, simplerand potentially cleaner way to turn seawater into. The application of ambient energy for water desalination is continuing, and it is intended to explore commercialscale water desalination using msfmed evaporation techniques. Utilizes lowtemperature waste heat, pdf permissions. Low adsorption capacity of electrode materials energy loss during regeneration. As populations increase we are seeing sources of high quality, fresh drinking water decrease. Desalination is a process that takes away mineral components from saline water. The desalination system, which uses a combination of membrane distillation technology and lightharvesting nanophotonics, is the first major innovation from the center for. With improvements in technology, desalination processes are becoming cost competitive with other methods of producing usable water for our growing needs. It is clear from the feasibility study that ambient energy can be used for water desalination in temperate climates. Saltwater is desalinated to produce water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. Lowcost desalination the promise of forward osmosis utilizing lowpressure, lowenergy membrane technology, oasys water is setting out to change the way people think about desalination. As a novel and emerging desalination technology, the system design and operation need further optimization.
More generally, desalination refers to the removal of salts and minerals from a target substance, as in soil desalination, which is an issue for agriculture. In 2007, the total capacity of installed seawater desalination plants worldwide was about 30 million m3d of which about 85 % is still in operation. Memstill low cost membrane distillation technology for. Similarly, mar ketlike transfers of water can also offer relatively low cost ways of ac quiring additional supplies of water. Freshwater from salt water using only solar energy.
Memstill low cost membrane distillation technology for seawater desalination article in desalination 1681. By combining solar pv, solar thermal, and a heat exchanger, desolenator has developed a lowcost portable water purifier and desalination. The project team used engineering judgment in determining how to compare these reported. Cheap, simple technique turns seawater into drinking water. Similarly, mar ketlike transfers of water can also offer relatively lowcost ways of ac quiring additional supplies of water. Other desalination technologies are used less widely due to their rudimentary development andor higher cost. However, there is no single desalination technology that is considered best for all uses 2. A federally funded research effort to revolutionize water treatment has yielded an offgrid technology that uses energy from sunlight alone to turn salt water into fresh drinking water. Water produced by desalination costs just a third of what. Using desalination technologies for water treatment. Energy needs and cost of desalination technologies. Project objectives develop and optimize a pilot nesmd system, move the technology from trl 3 to trl 7, and assess its potential for low cost solar desalination develop mathematical models at microscopic, reactor, and system levels design, build, test, and optimize an integrated, nesmd pilot system combine mathematical modeling and experiments in bench and.
Highlights a lowcost desalination method that employs vapor uptake from sea or brackish water. Please note that the facilities listed above provided cost information that varied in terms of level of detail and format. The advances in key equipment membranes, pumps, energycost recovery device, turned the process energy efficient, resulting in a low investment cost capex and low operational cost opex. Pdf desalination technologies for developing countries. Department of energy doe announced selections for solar desalination on june 19, 2018. A saltrejecting floating solar still for lowcost desalination. One ro pretreatment trend is the use of porous, high flux, lowpressure microfiltration mf and ultrafiltration uf membranes used to remove suspended solids that would otherwise.
A large portion of the new capacity growth is expected to come from the development of seawater desalination plants. Library of congress catalog card number 86600507 for sale by the superintendent of documents u. Since the projected industrial and irrigation requirements would be far exceeding that of domestic requirements, recycle and. Estimating the cost of brackish groundwater desalination in texas final report submitted to the texas water development board. Nowadays, desalination has become a very affordable solution to cope with fresh water shortage typically in tropical as well as of offshore areas. Handbook cost curve at the low end of the curve range, and approximately 26%. Egyptian researchers at the university of alexandria have created new desalination technology that filters salty and contaminated water faster and cheaper than the current technology. Low cost demand management techniques have not been exhausted and, so long as poten tial remains, demand management will offer the possibility of freeing up water to serve new uses at lower cost than desalination. Low cost desalination using nanophotonics enhanced direct. The byproduct of the desalination process is brine. Energy consumption is the major cost of desalination, accounting for more than of the cost of water in modern plants, and energy use also represents the major environmental impact of desalination. Lowcost demand management techniques have not been exhausted and, so long as poten tial remains, demand management will offer the possibility of freeing up water to serve new uses at lower cost than desalination. The application of desalination technology to produce low salinity, high quality water from high salinity or low quality source water continues to increase due to improvements in desalination technologies and a steady decrease in the cost of producing desalinated water compared to treating fresh water from low quality sources, as well as. Economic analysis of desalination technologies in the.
Estimating the cost of brackish groundwater desalination. The present analysis concludes that further reduction to ro desalination cost is less likely to arise from the development of membranes with higher permeability than the current generation, but is. A saltrejecting floating solar still for lowcost desalination george ni, a seyed hadi zandavi, a seyyed morteza javid, b svetlana v. Israel proves the desalination era is here scientific american. Lowcost desalination the promise of forward osmosis. Desalination can be defined as any process that removes salts from water. This total capacity is continuously increasing with a very rapid trend. Passive solar highyield seawater desalination by modular and. The present analysis concludes that further reduction to ro desalination cost is less likely to arise from the development of membranes with higher permeability than.
By combining energyrecovery devices with new lowpressure membranes and other commercially available advances, this spring adc members set a new world record for lowcost desalination, dropping the energy needed to 1. Advances in technology have made desalination plants an extremely costeffective, goto option for quality water in waterpoor regions such as the middle east but also in southwestern u. Jul 29, 2016 desalination used to be an expensive energy hog, but the kind of advanced technologies being employed at sorek have been a game changer. Desalination for costeffective water production advisian. The european team have also developed an innovative standalone solar desalination system based on a low temperature supercritical orc with funding for the planned rosolarrankine project. Highlights a low cost desalination method that employs vapor uptake from sea or brackish water. Low cost solar water desalination environmental sciences essay. In this chapter, principles of different membrane desalination. Recent developments in solar thermal desalination technologies. The desalination technology uses pervaporation, a technique by which the water is first filtered through the membrane to remove larger particles and then heated until it vaporizes. Request permissions a saltrejecting floating solar still for lowcost desalination. A road map for smallscale desalination an overview of existing and emerging technology solutions for costefficient and lowenergy desalination in south and southeast asia kathryn s. It has already been noted that the cost of desalination is directly proportional to feedwater salt.
The desalination system, which uses a combination of membrane distillation technology and lightharvesting nanophotonics, is the first major innovation from the center for nanotechnology enabled water treatment. Pdf seawater desalinationcosts and technology trends. Utilizes low temperature waste heat, desalination plants. The cost of this system depends on the size of sphere. This work critically assessed the currently available technologies and concluded that adsorption based desalination technology can handle feed water with high salinity up to 67,000ppm and produce low salinity water 10ppm with minimum running cost 0. Jun 19, 2017 a federally funded research effort to revolutionize water treatment has yielded an offgrid technology that uses energy from sunlight alone to turn salt water into fresh drinking water. Low cost nanomaterials for water desalination and purification. Dec 14, 2018 solar desalination is an attractive alternative to energyintensive conventional seawater desalination. Science driven costly plants have overly long product water delivery pipelines. Comparative analysis of desalination technologies sciencedirect. Alternative appropriate technology for personal desalination. Reverse osmosis ro desalination is a treatment process for production of fresh, lowsalinity potable water from saline water source seawater or brackish water via membrane separation. Since the projected industrial and irrigation requirements would be far exceeding that of domestic requirements, recycle and reuse of waste effluents apart from desalination. According to the international desalination association, in june 2015, 18,426 desalination plants operated worldwide, producing 86.
These are the different techniques that can be used for low cost water desalination. By combining energyrecovery devices with new low pressure membranes and other commercially available advances, this spring adc members set a new world record for low cost desalination, dropping the energy needed to 1. Costeffective desalination technology adesoji adegbulu. Aug 25, 2006 such price drops are now widely expected to continue. The sphere with capacity of storing 5 litres water is costs rs. Official pdf, 5 pages world bank documents world bank group. The vapor is then condensed to get rid of small impurities, and clean water is collected. In japan, a spray flash evaporation system was developed by saga university.
The economics of desalination remain challenging regardless of technology. A road map for smallscale desalination an overview of existing and emerging technology solutions for cost efficient and low energy desalination in south and southeast asia kathryn s. Desalination processes may be used in municipal, industrial, or commercial applications. Pdf necessity drives invention that is the basis of desalination technology. This technology is a desalination system that allows for the collection of clean water and the production of valuable products like salt materials. Use of lowtemperature geothermal energy for desalination. Water desalination technologies utilizing conventional and. Improvements to thermal desalination technologies and low cost, integrated designs for solarthermal collection and storage can reduce the cost of desalination, while also enabling smaller and more portable systems. Low cost desalination by solar thermal evaporation and radiative cooling. As far as reduction in infrastructure cost, pvc pipes can be used instead of cement pipes. Competing technologies including evaporation and reverse osmosis ro schemes are inherently energyintensive, and therefore costintensive. European team develop solarpowered, lowcost desalination system. Egyptians discover new, lowcost desalination technology. Improved desalination technologies have been playing important roles to reduce the unit cost of water noticeably over time.
Economic feasibility evaluation of solar distillation systems. As noted in this paper, the cost of developing, constructing, and operating a desalination facility depends on the location of the plant, the raw water type and quality, type of intake and outfall, the desalination technology and energy recovery systems used, the cost of electrical power, any required posttreatment and storage, distribution. In this study, the authors present a completely passive, multistage and low cost distiller. Dec 16, 2014 by combining solar pv, solar thermal, and a heat exchanger, desolenator has developed a low cost portable water purifier and desalination device powered by renewable energy. Low cost desalination by solar thermal evaporation and radiative cooling invention.
Comparison of costs and other factors affecting choice of desalination technologies. With improvements in technology, desalination processes are becoming costcompetitive with other methods of producing usable water for our growing needs. There are two ways to think about the cost of desalination. Estimating the cost of brackish groundwater desalination in texas. Economic analysis of desalination technologies in the context. Oct 20, 2015 researchersfrom the university of alexandria have developed a cheaper, simplerand potentially cleaner way to turn seawater into drinking water thanconventional methods.
Seawater desalination is the most preferred technology regarding the feed water type, mainly because of its availability. Novel and emerging technologies for produced water treatment. The big idea behind corporate desalination projects greenbiz. A typical large scale desalination plant produces 100,000 cubic meters of water per day. Freshwater from salt water using only solar energy modular, offgrid desalination technology could supply families, towns. The current desalination process, used widely across the middle east and north africa, is based on reverseosmosis technology. Chapter 6 likely development of technologies and costs. Use of lowtemperature geothermal energy for desalination in. Hawaiian islands, the national energy laboratory tested an opencycle otec plant with fresh water and power production using a temperature of. Government printing office, washington, dc 204029325. The reclaimed water from waste water can be used for irrigation, cooling water and other industrial applications.