Novel Decarbonized Desalination System: Technoeconomic–Environmental Feasibility with Optimal Designing

In this contribution, technoeconomic–environmental feasibility is explored for large-scale freshwater production via the multi-effect distillation (MED) route. Along with thermal vapor compression (TVC), its mechanical counterpart (MVC) and their optimal coupling (TVC + MVC) are introduced to retrofit with the existing MED and for a new plant. These three energy-intensified configurations are scaled up from a plant scenario prior to globally optimizing them within the framework of the genetic algorithm. To account for the impact of CO₂ emission, the cost model is updated with carbon tax indices. The proposed desalination systems are further integrated with a solar device to make them self-sustainable from an energy perspective. Finally, a comprehensive feasibility study for both the solar and nonsolar configurations of the three large-scale desalinators (capacity = 400,000 m³/day) is conducted to present a clear picture that would assist to choose the best MED option with different priorities from an economic, environmental, efficiency, and productivity perspective.