Thermodynamic and thermoeconomic analyses of seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant with energy recovery

This paper investigates the performance of a RO (reverse osmosis) desalination plant at different seawater salinity values. An energy recovery Pelton turbine is integrated with the desalination plant. Thermodynamic analysis, based on the first and second laws of thermodynamics, as well as a thermo-based economic analysis is performed for the proposed system. The effects of the system components irreversibilities on the economics and cost of product water are parametrically studied through the thermoeconomic analysis. The exergy analysis shows that large irreversibilities occur in the high pressure pump and in the RO module. Both thermodynamic and thermoeconomic performances of the overall system are investigated under different operating parameters. For the base case; the system achieves an exergy efficiency of 5.82%. The product cost is estimated to be 2.451 $/m3 and 54.2 $/MJ when source water with salinity of 35,000 ppm is fed to the system.