Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionEnvironmental Science and Engineering Program
Water Desalination and Reuse Research Center (WDRC)
KAUST Grant Number
FCC/1/1971-03-01Date
2017-05-02Online Publication Date
2017-05-02Print Publication Date
2017-05Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/623674
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper presents an evaluation process efficiency based on the consumption of primary energy for all types of practical desalination methods available hitherto. The conventional performance ratio has, thus far, been defined with respect to the consumption of derived energy, such as the electricity or steam, which are susceptible to the conversion losses of power plants and boilers that burned the input primary fuels. As derived energies are usually expressed by the units, either kWh or Joules, these units cannot differentiate the grade of energy supplied to the processes accurately. In this paper, the specific energy consumption is revisited for the efficacy of all large-scale desalination plants. In today's combined production of electricity and desalinated water, accomplished with advanced cogeneration concept, the input exergy of fuels is utilized optimally and efficiently in a temperature cascaded manner. By discerning the exergy destruction successively in the turbines and desalination processes, the relative contribution of primary energy to the processes can be accurately apportioned to the input primary energy. Although efficiency is not a law of thermodynamics, however, a common platform for expressing the figures of merit explicit to the efficacy of desalination processes can be developed meaningfully that has the thermodynamic rigor up to the ideal or thermodynamic limit of seawater desalination for all scientists and engineers to aspire to.Citation
Ng KC, Shahzad MW, Son HS, Hamed OA (2017) An exergy approach to efficiency evaluation of desalination. Applied Physics Letters 110: 184101. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4982628.Sponsors
The authors would like to thank the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) (CCF3 Project No: FCC/1/1971-03-01) and Desalination Technology Research Institute (DTRI) of SWCC.Publisher
AIP PublishingJournal
Applied Physics LettersAdditional Links
http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4982628ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1063/1.4982628