Parametric study of mult-effect desalination with thermal vapour compression plant

Abstract

Desalination is a method of producing water from sea or brackish water for drinking, Industry, and irrigation in arid and semi-arid countries, multi-effect desalination with thermal vapour compression (MED-TVC) is a thermal desalination process which has high exergy efficiency compared to other thermal processes. This paper presents the parametric study of a proposed plant modelled using the IPSEpro software package which was validated against data from Kish Island 1536 t/d operational data, where very good agreement between the model results and operational data were found. Then the model was scaled up to produce 24000 t/d to provide fresh water to Zawya City in Libya. The results show that as seawater temperature and salinity increases, exergy efficiency and GOR also increase, and the exergy destruction associated with the steam ejector was around 40%. In addition, the effect of number of effects was investigated, and the results showed that as number of effects increases the exergy efficiency and GOR increase.