Seawater integrated desalination plant without brine discharge and powered by renewable energy systems

Environmental effects are one of the main concerns of massive desalination facilities.To reach the objective of no brine discharge the salt from seawater must be completely separated and obtained as a secondary and valuable product. If no CO 2 emission increase is desired, the power source must be a combination of renewable ener gy systems (RES). This paper presents an analysis of an integrated desalination scheme consisting of two sequential systems: a multi-effect distillation (MED) plant and a mechanical vapour compression (MVC) system based on evaporator equipment. The energy is obtained by several wind turbines (WT) and a thermal solar collector (TSC) field. Separation of salt and water is achieved in a coupled multi-ef distillation–mechanical vapour compression fect (MED + MVC) two step process.The MED stage is driven by thermal solar collectors, whereas the ener consuming gy mechanical compression of the vapour (MVC) is fuelled by wind-powered turbines. Interestingly final products , the of this process are dry salt and fresh water. Such a system has been designed and dimensioned for a throughput of 100 m3/h of desalted water A preliminary study of the investment, amortization and exploitation costs of a combined . MED + MVC + WT + TSC installation with these dimensions has been done. The price of desalted water , after 3 considering the profits due to the sale of salt and electricityhas been estimated at 0.59 €/m. If the initial investment , 3 has a 35% subsidy, a final price of 0.41 €/m could be ensured, which is near the price associated to conventional energy sources. An outline of the solar collector system and the technical requirements of the wind turbines in needed to meet the energy demand of the MED + MVC system are also included.