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Designing Cost-Effective Sea Water Reverse Osmosis System under
Optimal Energy Options for Developing Countries
Asmerom M. Gilau and Mitchell J. Small
Carnegie Mellon University, Engineering & Public Policy/ H. John Heinz III Professor
of Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Civil & Environmental
Engineering and Engineering & Public Policy
Abstract
Today, three billion people around the world have no access to clean drinking water and about 1.76
billion people live in areas already facing a high degree of water stress. This paper analyzes the cost-
effectiveness of a stand alone small-scale renewable energy powered sea water reverse-osmosis (SWRO)
system for developing countries. In this paper, we have introduced a new methodology; an energy
optimization model which simulates hourly power production from renewable energy sources. Using the
results of the model, we have computed hourly water production for a two stage SWRO system with a
capacity of 35m
3
/day. According to our results, specific energy consumption is about 2.33kWh/m
3
, which
is a lower value than that achieved in most of the previous designs. Using a booster pump, energy
recovery turbine and appropriate membrane, specific energy consumption could be decreased by about
70%. Furthermore, the energy recovery turbine could reduce water cost by about 41%. Still, power cost is
the major component of the total investment constituting about 80% of the total cost of the SWRO
system. Our results show that, wind powered system is the cheapest and a PV powered system, the most
expensive, with about 0.50$/m
3
and 1.00$/m
3
, respectively. By international standards, for example, in
China, these values are considered economically feasible. Detailed simulations of RO system design,
energy options, power and water costs, and life cycle analysis are discussed.
_________________________________
Key Words: Reverse osmosis; Energy recovery; Optimal energy options; Energy storage;
Power Cost; Water Cost
1. Background
Today, about three billion people around the world have no acess to clean drinking water.
According to the World Water Council, by 2020, the world will be about 17 percent short of the
water to feed the world population. Moreover, about 1.76 billion people live in areas already
facing a high degree of water stress (Vrsmarty et. al, 2001). "Water stress" is on the top of the
worlds agenda at least as firmly as climate change (Vaknin, 2005). As a result, the need for
desalination is increasing, even in regions where water supply is adequate.
As part of the most affected arid areas of the world, Eritrea has been the victim of recurrent
droughts and water shortage. The problems of water supply vary from place to place and one of
the most severe problems exists in the coastal areas and islands (MLWE, 1995). Thus, the case
study will asses the use of renewable energy for sea water reverse osmosis for the coastal village
of Berasoel, located at the Southern Red Sea, Eritrea.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Renewable Energy for Developing Countries-2006
2
Sea water desalination is an energy-intensive process (Gaparini, 1985; Carta, et. al 2003). Most of the
available large scale desalination plants around the world are powered by fuel. Due to the concern of
global warming, and increasing fuel costs alternative energy sources has been proposed for desalination
purposes. For example, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has proposed to use nuclear
power for large scale desalination plants (Carta et. al. 2003), and the use of renewable energy sources for
small scale desalination plants is emerging. Autonomous wind powered sea water reverse osmosis
potentials has been studied (Feron 1985; Marcos et.al. 2002) and pilot projects are in progress (Carta et.
al. 2003). However, the application of renewable energy for desalination has not yet reached sufficient
maturity to be applied widely. Moreover, most of the proposed designs are connected to the conventional
power grids (Sultan et. al. 2002, Carta et. al. 2003). Thus, the main objective of this research is to design
a cost-effective reverse osmosis system, which functions under optimal energy options. This paper
introduces a new methodology of an energy optimization model for the sea water reverse osmosis
(SWRO) system.
In the analysis, two major models are applied, namely Reverse Osmosis System Analysis
(ROSA)
1
, a sophisticated reverse osmosis (RO) design program that predicts the performance of
membranes in user specified systems, and HOMER
2
, an energy optimization model for hybrid as
well as stand alone power systems. Life cycle analyses are performed to examine the
performance of the system, determine water costs and undertake comparative analysis of
different options.
2. Situation Analysis
2.1 Water Demand: Recent studies conduced by the Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental
Science and Technology (2003) indicate that East African countries have renewable freshwater
resources below the calculated threshold of 1500 m
3
per capita year. Eritrea is already in water
deficits. According to the recent studies, in the coastal parts of the country water demand is
116m
3
/household/year (Marie and Pedersen, 2001). Thus, for the Berasoel village of 108
households, we are assuming an average water demand of 35m
3
/day and 13,000m
3
/year.
2.2. Energy Supply: In Eritrea, there is a strong potential for wind-powered electricity
generation (Habtesion et. al. , 2001) and sunshine is abundant. The Southeast coast of Eritrea has
as much as 100 - 200 kilometres of 6 and 7 wind classes. At these sites, wind turbines may
operate at a 40% - 60% capacity factor (Habtetsion and Tsighe, 2002), which implies that the
wind potential ranges from excellent to exceptional (African Development Bank, 2004), and
could be potentially used for commercial and industrial purposes as well. The average annual
wind speed and solar radiation are about 6.8m/s and 6.8kWh/m
2
, respectively.
3. Modeling Sea Water Reverse Osmosis Design and Optimal Energy Options
3.1 Sea Water Reverse Osmosis Design Considerations
3.1.1 Model Description: ROSA 6.0.1 software is the latest version, used in the analysis in order
to determine the performance of a membrane and energy requirements for desalination. The use
of the model is influenced by the need to design a technically feasible RO system. We have
1
ROSA is developed by the DOW chemical company.
2
Homer is developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NRWL).
Proceedings of the International Conference on Renewable Energy for Developing Countries-2006
3
extended the application of the model in creating an operating window for a RO system that
could operate under intermittent power supply. This is done by running the model multiple times
under different water flow and pressures. The main inputs of the model include the amount of
feed water and its chemical characteristics, feed water flow rate, feed water and concentrate feed
pressures, temperature and pH. Then a configuration of the number of membranes, pressure
vessels, and type of membrane, and feed and booster pumps is determined. After performing
calculations, the model provides the amount of water produced and energy required. The energy
required to produce an intended amount of drinking water with acceptable water quality is then
determined by running the model multiple times. Booster pumps and an energy recovery turbine
are applied.
3.1.2 RO System Design and Energy Consumption: Using ROSA, we have performed several
RO design options capable of producing 35m
3
/day potable water. After performing several
design alternatives, our preferred design is a two stage design with three membrane elements in
each stage (figure 1). The reasons for choosing a two stage system is in order to increase water
productivity by applying a booster pump, and recover a significant amount of energy. The type
of the membrane used in the analysis is SW30HRLE-400. The membrane is designed to properly
function under intermittent energy supply (Dow, 2005).
High pressure
pump (Booster)
Low pressure
pump
Product
tank
Post
Treatment
Product/
permeate
water
Pretreatment
1st stage
membranes
2nd stage
membranes
Feed water
from Red Sea
Seawater Reverse Osmosis Desalination System for Beraso'ele Village, Southern Red Sea, Eritrea
Energy
Recovery
Turbine
P
r1
P
r2
P
r3
P
r4
Q
1
Q
5
Q
2
Q
3
Q
4
Q
6
Q
7
P
w1
P
w2
P
w3
Figure 1: Schematic double stage RO system for the village of Berasoel, Southeastern Red Sea, Eritrea.
In reverse osmosis desalination systems, energy is a major consideration. Power consumption by
the system which includes power for sea water pumping, high pressure pumping, booster, and
chemical treatment could be calculated using equation 1(Darwish et. al. 2002).
n
n n
E
Q Pr
Pw n
= (1)
Where, Pw
n
(kW) = Power consumed by feed, low and high pressure, booster and chemical water
treatment pumps,
Q
n
(m
3
/s) = Rates of feed water(Q
1
), fresh water production (Q
5 +
Q
6
), boosted water(Q
3
),
Pr
n
(kPa) = Feed pressure(Pr
1
), boosted pressure (Pr
3
), rejection pressure (Pr
2
and
Pr
4
),and
E
n
(Net efficiency of feed pump) = Ep (pump efficiency) x En(motor efficiency) for high
pressure pump (booster) and energy recovery turbine.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Renewable Energy for Developing Countries-2006
4
According to Darwish et. al (2002) the low pressure pump consumes the highest energy(Pw
1
),
and the rest constitutes about 20% of the LP pump. The power required for the systems LP
pump, at 10m
3
/h feed water flow rate, 45bar pressure, and 0.85 pump efficiency, is about
14.71kW. An additional 2.94kW will be needed for booster, feed water, chemical treatment and
other pumps, which is about 20% of the LP power requirement. Thus, the total power required
for the RO system design is about 17.64kW. Using ROSA software, we have obtained a similar
result, which is 17.23kW. The specific work done is about 3.92kWh/m
3
potable water produced.
Without a booster pump, the system requires about 7.87kWh/ m
3
, and its water quality
deteriorates from 270 ppm to 800 ppm total dissolved solids. Moreover, if the booster pump is
not applied, water production in the second stage could decrease by about 33% per hour i.e. from
2.1 m
3
/hr to 1.4m
3
/hr. Thus, in terms of water production, water quality, and energy recovery, a
two stage RO design is a preferable. The system design has an average conversion factor of 55%
(relation between product water flow and feed water flow), producing about 4.4m
3
/hr of potable
water.
3.1.3 Performance Prediction: In designing the SWRO system that uses intermittent energy
sources, it is very important to design a RO system that could operate under broad operational
windows. The main thresholds of the operational window include the maximum feed pressure
(determined by the membrane mechanical resistance); maximum brine flow rate (should not be
exceeded to avoid membrane deterioration); minimum brine flow rate (should be maintained to
avoid precipitation and consequent membrane fouling); and maximum product concentration (if
the applied pressure is less than a determined value, the permeate concentration will be too high)
(Marcos et. al, 2002).
Using chemical characteristics of water of the study area (Thomson et. al., 2001), and varying
the values of variables of operational window thresholds, we have run the model several times.
According to the results of the analysis, at 25
0
C, the maximum allowable pressure, maximum
brine flow rate, minimum feed flow rate, and minimum pressure of our design are about 50 bar,
16m
3
/h, 7m
3
/h, and 30 bar, respectively (figure 2a).
Water quality and flowrate threshholds of the SWRO design
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Feedwater flow rate(m
3
/h)
W
a
t
e
r
Q
u
a
lit
y
(
p
p
m
)
50 bar
45 bar
40 bar
35 bar
30 bar
Power Thresholds for The SWRO design
5
10
15
20
25
30
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Feed water flow rate(m
3
/h)
P
u
m
p
i
n
g
P
o
w
e
r
(
k
W
)
50 bar
45 bar
40 bar
35bar
30 bar
Figure 2. (a) Water quality and feed water flow rate, (b) power thresholds of the SWRO system.
(a) (b)
Proceedings of the International Conference on Renewable Energy for Developing Countries-2006
5
This design allows the production of potable water with an average water quality of about 500
ppm total dissolved solids or less, which is the World Health Organization (WHO)s water
quality acceptable standard. Likewise, in order to operate under this operational window, the
energy supply or pumping power should not be less than 7 kW and not exceed 26 kW (figure
2b). This means that, without interrupting the operation of the system, it can operate at as low as
7kW and as high as 26kW power supply, which is a wide operating window. This is one of the
aspects that could potentially make renewable energy resources for SWRO systems more
attractive.
The average conversion factor of the system, at 25
0
C, is about 55%. Carta et. al.(2003)
indicated that for an increase of 1
0
C, water production increases by about 4%. Thus, since the
climatic condition of the study area is very hot, with average monthly temperatures varying from
26.5
0
C to 35.5
0
C (Buskirk, 1998), it is expected that, most of the time of the year; the conversion
factor could reach as high as 70%.
3.1.4 Energy recovery: Energy recovery should be considered if brine exits the system at 300
psig or more, and if system recovery is less than 80 % (Amjad, Z. 1993). Since the brine
rejection pressure of our design is well above 300 psig, such as 760 psi (52.82 bar), the potential
for energy recovery is very high. For example, using an energy recovery turbine with an
efficiency of 0.85, at a concentrate pressure of 52.82 bar, and concentrate water flow of 5.6m
3
/hr,
about 6.98kW (equation 2) energy could be recovered. Thus, our design can potentially reduce
power consumption by half, from 15kW to about 9kW.
`
t n n
E Q = Pr Pw n ( 2 )
Where, E
t
is turbine efficiency, Pr
n
(kPa) is the feed pressure, and Q
n
(m
3
/s) is rates of the feed brine.
The type of energy recovery turbine under consideration is the pressure exchange (PX) turbine,
PX45s (Energy Recovery Inc. Data Sheet, 2005). Using this energy recovery device, net energy
consumption could be reduced from 17.23kW to 10.25kW, and specific energy consumption
from 3.92kWh/m
3
to 2.33kWh/m
3
. This is about a 40% energy recovery, and it is a substantial
energy recovery opportunity for a small scale sea water reverse osmosis system. Therefore, using
a boosted pump and energy recovery turbine, energy consumption has decreased from about
7.87kWh/ m
3
to about 2.33kWh/m
3
. Darwish (2002) and a RO system in a Caribbean (Curacao)
islands have reported a specific energy consumption of 4.52kWh/m
3
, and 3.15kWh/m
3
,
respectively, for 5700 m
3
/day desalination water capacity. Compared with these results, our
design results are low, though compatible.
Thus, depending on the feed flow rate and pressure exerted, our operating window of the system
can potentially recover anywhere between 4kW to 12kW. The RO system is expected to operate
under a semi-instantaneous base load of 17kW. Thus, assuming a feed pressure of 45 bar,
boosting pressure of 10 bar and feed water flow rate of 10 m
3
/hr, the system can recover about 4
kW to 7 kW per hour (figure 3). Moreover, increasing the feed water flow rate at low pressure
could substantially increase energy recovery and water production. In this regard, within the
operational window of the system, any other points of operation could be selected as an initial
point of operation.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Renewable Energy for Developing Countries-2006
6
Initial energy consumption, potential energy recovery, and net energy
consumtion at 45 bar feed pressure of the RO syetm
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Feed water(m
3
/hr)
E
n
e
r
g
y
c
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n
/
r
e
c
o
v
e
r
y
(
k
W
)
Energy recovery(kW)
Initial energy consumption(kW)
Net energy consumption(kW)
Figure 3. Energy recovery potential of the RO system at 45 bar feed pressure
3.2 Modeling Optimal Energy Options
The main objective of this analysis is to determine cost-effective and feasible energy options to
produce the required amount of water using the SWRO design discussed in the previous section.
The types of energy options under consideration include stand alone as well as hybrid energy
sources of wind, PV, and diesel. In determining least cost energy options, we have used an
optimization model, HOMER, developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
(NREL).
3.2.1 Model Description: HOMER evaluates different energy options by simulating hourly
energy flows for complex hybrid as well as stand alone power systems. The model simulates the
power system configurations, optimizes for lifecycle costs, and generates results. It simulates the
operation of a system by making energy balance calculations for each of the 8,760 hours of the
year. For each hour, the model compares the electric load in the hour to the energy that the
system can supply in that hour. In the presence of energy storage devices, the model determines
when to discharge and charge electricity. The model also estimates the lifecycle cost of the sys-
tem based on capital, replacement, operation and maintenance, and fuel costs of each component
including PV, wind turbines, batteries, generators, and inverters. After simulating the system
configurations, the model displays a list of feasible systems, sorted by lifecycle cost, based on
their net present values (NPVs). Then, based on the results, we have to navigate for the least cost
and feasible systems. However, all the least cost systems are not necessarily feasible. Thus,
reliability and other issues need to be considered in deciding the optimal energy option.
3.2.2 Determining SWRO Base Load: In reverse osmosis desalination systems, energy is a
major consideration. Depending on the capacity of the RO systems, estimates of energy use
ranges from 2 to 10 kWh/m
3
of water produced (Hafez, 2002). The average base load for our RO
system is 17 kW/h with a specific work done of about 2.33 kWh/m
3
. In order to make the
assumptions of SWRO energy demands more realistic, 5% and 2% noise are added in the model
for daily and hourly loads, respectively (figure 4). The challenge is optimizing the constant load
under highly variable power supply systems.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Renewable Energy for Developing Countries-2006
7
Figure 4: SWRO system design monthly primary average loads.
In order to solve the challenge, we have designed the SWRO system to operate anywhere
between 7kW and 27kW, which are the allowed operating power thresholds. Any power below
and above about 7kW and 27kW, could ultimately be considered as excess power. Thus, we are
trying to optimize the regular SWRO power load under an irregular power supply, which makes
the analysis complex, especially when wind energy is considered. Based on the base load power
requirement, different energy models are simulated with different based load configurations,
with and without energy storage devices. An energy dispatch strategy is designed to fulfill the
base load of the RO system depending on the type of energy option selected.
3.2.3 Wind Power
3.2.3.1. Implications of Wind Speed Variations: The average wind speed of the study area is 6.8
m/s (GoE, 2004). Wind speed distributions can typically be described in terms of the Weibull
distribution (Feron, 1985). According to Rosen (1998), the shape parameter for the Southern Red
Sea area, particularly Port Assab, is 2.4. The standard Weibull shape parameter is 2.5. Using the
Danish Industry Wind Association power calculator, at 25
0
C, 10m above sea level, 101.21 kPa
atmospheric pressure, 1.22 kg/m
3
air density and 2.4 shape parameter, the scale parameter is
7.67. Thus, using equation 3, the probability of the wind speed distribution is computed.
( )
(
|
.
|
\
|
=
k
k
v
c
v
c
v
c
k
v f exp ) (
1
( 3 )
Where, v is wind speed in m/s
k is shape parameter(Beta),
c is scale parameter(Alpha)
|
.
|
\
|
+ I
=
k
V
1
1
V