ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

ASSIGNMENT
ON
DESALINATION OF
WATER

SUBMITTED BY:
INTRODUCTION
Desalination is a process that extracts mineral components from
saline water. More generally, desalination refers to the removal of
salts and minerals from a target substance which is brackish water
and seawater in this case.
Saltwater is desalinated to produce water suitable for human
consumption or irrigation. One by-product of desalination is salt.
Desalination is used on many seafaring ships and submarines. Most
of the modern interest in desalination is focused on cost-effective
provision of fresh water for human use. Along with recycled
wastewater, it is one of the few rainfall-independent water sources.
Due to its energy consumption, desalinating sea water is generally
more costly than fresh water from rivers or groundwater, water
recycling and water conservation. However, these alternatives are
not always available and depletion of reserves is a critical problem
worldwide. Currently, approximately 1% of the world's population is
dependent on desalinated water to meet daily needs, but the UN
expects that 14% of the world's population will encounter water
scarcity by 2025.
WHY DESALINATION?
 No society can function without fresh water.
 Availability of good quality water is on decline and water
demand is on rise.
 Of all the water in the world, only 0.5%-1% is freshwater
available for the needs of the all plant, animal and human life.
Around 97% of the water in the world is in the oceans and
approximately 2%-2.5% of the water is in ice stored in glaciers
and in polar ice, although global warming is reducing this
reservoir of fresh water.

 Water scarcity affects every continent and around 2.8 billion

people around the world at least one month out of every year.
More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean drinking water.
 Salt water is abundant, but fresh water is not.
 Desalination can protect freshwater aquifers from brackish
water intrusion.
 All naturally occurring water, even rain, contains substances
dissolved in it. These substances will include salts such as
sodium chloride, calcium bicarbonate, magnesium sulphate and
a range of other naturally occurring substance. These
substances contribute to the flavor of water; water which has
no dissolved substances in it tastes “flat” and unpleasant.
Equally, if the concentration of dissolved substances is too high,
as in seawater for example, the water tastes unpleasant. For
normal drinking water supplies, there has to be a balance
between these two extremes.
 Table 1: The classification of water
Table 2: The palatability of water according to its concentration of solids.
according to its concentration of TDS.

THE GENERALITIES
DESALINATION PROCESSES
1. Thermal Processes

- Multi-Stage Flash evaporation (MSF)

- Multiple-Effect Distillation (MED)

- Vapor compression distillation (VCD)

- Solar distillation

- Freezing process

2. Membrane Processes

- Reverse Osmosis

- Electro-Dialysis

- Forward Osmosis

3. Other Processes

- Capacitive Deionization

- Ion Exchange

Table 3: Range of concentrations to which different desalination processes can

be applied.
PRE-TREATMENT OF FEED WATER
The water fed to a desalination plant will generally contain other
impurities in addition to dissolved solids such as silt, algae, bacteria
and other forms of small plant and animal life. A particularly
important form of impurity is the Transparent Exopolymer Particles
(TEP). TEP are formed from dissolved polymers exuded by
phytoplankton and bacteria and are found in the sea and fresh water
in concentrations of 28 to 5000 particles per milliliter and vary in size
from 2-200 micro-meters. TEP can be an important source of
nutrition for micro-organisms including bacteria. Pre-treatment will
typically consist of some form of filtration, for example by using some
form of coagulation process to cause particulate impurities especially
TEP to agglomerate thus making removal by filtration more effective.
MULTI-STAGE FLASH EVAPORATION
(MSF)
• Saline (sea or brackish) water is heated and evaporated and
pure water is obtained by condensing the vapor.

• Both temperature and pressure increase when water is heated.

• Heated water passes to another chamber at lower pressure

causing vapor formation.

• Vapor is led off and condensed to pure water using cold sea
water feeding first heating stage.

• Concentrated brine passes to second chamber at a still lower

pressure and more water evaporates and water is condensed as
before.

• Process is repeated until atmospheric pressure is reached.

• Typically, an MSF plant can contain from 4 to about 40 stages.

MULTIPLE-EFFECT DISTILLATION
(MED)
 Also known as long-tube vertical distillation (LTV).
 Principle similar to multi-stage flash evaporation, except that
steam is used to heat up the seawater in the first stage and the
resulting vapor is used in subsequent stages to evaporate the
water.
 The seawater/brine is used to cool and condense the vapor in
each successive stage.
 The temperature gradually falls across each stage of the
process.
SOLAR DISTILLATION
 Heat from the sun warms the seawater in a glass-covered tank
causing some to evaporate.
 The vapour is condensed on a glass cover and the resultant
fresh water is collected
 This is a cheap low-cost system, the main costs arising from the
pumping of the seawater and the fresh water condensate but is
not suitable for large-scale production of water.
 Problems can arise from the growth of algae on the underside
of the glass cover, and good sealing is required otherwise the
vapour and heat can escape reducing the effectiveness of the
system.
  A well-maintained solar still produces about 8 litres for every
square metre of glass, so the area required for about 4 people
would be 130-260 square metres.

ELECTRODIALYSIS
 Electrodialysis uses a stack of ion-exchange membranes which
are selective to positive and negative ions.
 The salts in seawater are composed of positive and negative
ions so, for example, common salt (which is sodium chloride,
NaCl) dissolves in water to produce positively charged sodium
ions and negatively charged chloride ions thus: -
NaCl → Na+ + Cl-
 Under the influence of a direct current the positive sodium ions
pass through a cation membrane and the negative chloride ions
pass through an anion membrane.
 The incoming saline water is thus converted into two streams,
one of concentrated brine and one of desalinated (fresh) water.
  Fouling of the ion exchange membranes can occur and this can
be partly overcome by reversing the direction of the DC current;
this process is known as electrodialysis reversal or EDR.

REVERSE OSMOSIS
 Osmosis is the process in which water passes through a semi-
permeable membrane from a low-concentration solution into a
high-concentration solution,
 If a pressure is applied to the high-concentration side of the
membrane the reverse process occurs, namely water diffuses
through the semi-permeable membrane from the high-
concentration solution into the low-concentration solution, i.e.
reverse osmosis.
 Seawater is pumped under pressure across the surface of the
membrane, water molecules diffuse through the membrane
leaving a concentrated brine solution on the feed-side of the
membrane and fresh water on the low-pressure product side.
 The brine solution is rejected as wastewater and is typically
between 10% and 50% of the feed water depending on the
salinity and pressure of the feed water.
  Reverse osmosis membranes are manufactured from modern
plastic materials in either sheets or hollow fibres.
 Membranes are subject to contamination, especially biofouling,
arising from suspended particles and micro-organisms in the
feed water.

COST ANALYSIS
 The benefits of desalination are straightforward i.e. it provides
more water. But the drawback, unfortunately, is the cost.
 Regardless most people would avoid paying 3-4 times more for
anything if they do not have to. If a region’s water supply is
currently meeting the needs of the people in a sustainable
manner, then switching to desalination, is not an urgent issue.
 If the supply is unsustainable and the rate consumption is high,
then some action must be taken to ensure that future
generations will have access to water.
 Desalination will be appropriate if the area is either rapidly
running out of water or if the effort it would take to make the
water supply sustainable is not feasible.
 Though there is no definitive answer to this question since the
cost comprises of a number of factor such as electricity,
chemicals, manpower, capital, maintenance etc.
  There are also alternative sources of energy which have been
proposed which will affect the costs of energy, for example
linking desalination plants with wind-power.
 An on-shore prototype using wind-power has been operating
successfully on the German Rugen Island in the North Sea since
March 1995 producing a maximum of 15 m 3/hr. of potable
water from a 300kW wind turbine.

Breakdown of costs for RO and in thermal desalination

WORLD’S LARGEST DESALINATION

PLANT
 The Ras Al-Khair Power and Desalination Plant is a hybrid
desalination plant that implements both the multistage flashing
(MSF) and reverse osmosis (RO) technologies.
 The plant has a capacity to produce 228 million imperial gallons
per day (MIGD) / 728 million liters per day.
 The project construction cost was SAR27bn (approximately
$7.2bn).
 The project includes a power plant capable of producing 2400
MW of electricity.
 In 2015, it won the Global Water Awards "Desalination Plant of
the Year" award.
  Of the 2400 MW electricity produced by the plant, 200 MW are
used by the plant itself.

INDIA’S LARGEST DESALINATION

PLANT
 The Minjur Desalination Plant is the India's largest desalination
plant.
 The Minjur Desalination Plant is a reverse osmosis, water
desalination plant at Kattupalli village, a northern suburb of
Chennai, India, on the coast of the Bay of Bengal that supplies
water to the city of Chennai.
 The plant is built on a 60-acre site in Kattupalli.
 The INR5.15bn (€91m) Minjur desalination plant has a capacity
of 100,000m³/day (100mld).
 The plant produces potable water using reverse osmosis (RO)
technology and serves an estimated population of 500,000 in
Chennai.
  Pre-treatment of the raw sea water includes coagulation-
flocculation, gravity and pressure filtration.
 Water from the plant will be utilised chiefly for industrial
purposes such as the Ennore Port and North Chennai Thermal
Power Station.
 However, during droughts, water from the plant will be
supplied to the public, serving an estimated population of

1,000,000.

CONCLUSION
 As promising as the process sounds, there’s still a price to pay.
As long as the cost of desalination continues to depend on the
cost of energy, these technologies won’t help much of the
energy starved developing world that needs them the most.
 Also, there is the problem of the toxic sludge generated as a by-
product.
 Throwing the brine back into the ocean can kill fish and smaller
denizens of the food chain.
 Proper design, operation and maintenance are essential to
reduce these costs further.