Desalination 329 (2013) 5761

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Desalination
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/desal

Start-up operations of MED desalination plants

Flavio Manenti a,, Maurizio Masi a, Giorgio Santucci b
a b

Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica Giulio Natta, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy EGS-Energy S.r.l., Via Felice Casati, 20, 20124 Milano, Italy

H I G H L I G H T S The dynamic behavior of desalination processes is broached. The start-up operations are rather critical in desalination processes and the segregation of the main physical phenomena is required. Depressurization of effects could easily lead to process instability. General guidelines for start-up procedure are given. The special focus is on geothermalsupplied plants.

G R A P H I C A L

A B S T R A C T

Flowsheet of the dynamic simulation of geothermal MED desalination plant for start-up operations.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
This paper is related to the previous work (Manenti et al., Parametric Simulation and Economic Assessment of Heat Integrated Geothermal Desalination Plant, Desalination, 317, 193205, 2013) and extends the steadystate simulation and process layout optimization by investigating the procedure to start up multi-effect distillation (MED) desalination plants. The operations involved in the startup procedure, such as seawater supply, energy supply and vacuum generation along the process are considered together with the status of controls to prevent any possible overlapping of these relevant aspects. Segregation of the operations is demonstrated to be essential to prevent any redundancy in the oscillatory behavior of process units that can easily lead to dangerous instabilities of the plant. Moreover, whenever geothermal sources are used for sustainable production of desalinated water, it is fundamental to account for some peculiarities such as certain limitations in controllability and operability of the geothermal source. General guidelines to start up desalination processes are provided; special attention is given to geothermal-supplied plants. 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 1 March 2013 Received in revised form 25 August 2013 Accepted 9 September 2013 Available online 2 October 2013 Keywords: Seawater desalination Geothermal energy Start-up operations Dynamic simulation Desalination process control

1. Introduction Wherever fresh water is abundant, agriculture and industry easily proliferate with the consequent improvement in the wellness and healthcare for population [1,2]. Unfortunately, although largely abundant

Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 02 2399 3273; fax: +39 02 7063 8173. E-mail address: avio.manenti@polimi.it (F. Manenti). 0011-9164/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2013.09.006

on the earth, only the 3% of the total is fresh water, whereas the rest is salt water. To tackle the potable water shortage of an increasing number of countries, desalination processes and technologies has received a tremendous attention in last years. The attention is especially focused on the possibility to make sustainable the seawater desalination process [112]. For instance, our previous work [13], which this research activity is based on and where we remind the reader for any additional detail, has coupled the geothermal source with multi-effect desalination plant by introducing certain novel technologies to intensify the

58

F. Manenti et al. / Desalination 329 (2013) 5761

production of fresh water and to smoothen seasonal variations by means of appropriate process layout. It is well-known that the process to desalinated water is energy intensive and signicant power consumption or signicant greenhouse emissions when fossil fuels are burnt for it are the unavoidable result of the traditional technologies. Nowadays, environmentally-friendly energy sources are used in order to desalinate seawater and many studies combine the desalination process, apart from the technology adopted, with renewable energy such as wind, solar, or geothermal sources. Nevertheless, despite the fast progress of science and technology in many elds, renewable energies are still in the state of research or pilot applications. The slow progress in the use of renewable energies is speeding up in last years and the recent advances made on applications of solar energy, wind energy, the kinetic forces of waves, and geothermal energy are already described elsewhere [14,15]. Their connection to desalination methods, a rather new achievement, is also discussed in the literature. Some interesting solutions are reported in the literature and deal with the nuclear energy option, the photovoltaics, membranebased, and geothermal energy [7,16,17]. Some authors [6] have provided a critical overview of seawater desalination using geothermal resources including the assessment of environmental risks and market potential and barriers to growth. A key-element is the assessment on the availability and suitability of low and high temperature geothermal energy for desalination with respect to other sources of renewable energy. They highlighted that the use of geothermal energy for thermal desalination can be justied only in the presence of cheap geothermal reservoirs, which is synonymous of supercial sources or in remote applications focusing on small-scale water supplies in coastal regions. This is the case, for instance, of the Greek island of Nisyros located in the southeastern part of the Aegean Sea, which is a remote location with supercial geothermal potential [18]. There, the technology most applicable for the exploitation of geothermal purposes is the multiple effect distillation process and, if opportunely combined with an effective desalination technology, it can eliminate energy consumption from hydrocarbons, minimize the environmental impact, and reduce the cost for fresh water. Whenever geothermal source is much more in depth, it can be exploited in combination with other sources. This motivates the most recent studies on hybrid-geothermal systems aimed at intensifying the existing solutions. Tzen and Morris [12] have described and compared the most promising integrations such as PV-reverse osmosis, windmechanical-vapor compression, geothermal-multieffect distillation, and provided certain technologies selection guidelines. Tomaszewska [19] has studied the case of Poland water shortage, proposing the use of a dual hybrid ultraltration and reverse osmosis for the desalination of special waters by means of low enthalpy geothermal waters. The possibility to use single and double effect absorption heat transformer systems is very appealing [20] looking forward the use of renewable energies as well as the waste heat of industrial processes. Manenti et al. [13] have improved and integrated single-technology desalination process, validating certain novelties for more efcient exploitation of geothermal source to the Isola di Pantelleria (Italy). Although the geothermal power should be rather constant, or better still its variations are so slow that cannot inuence the behavior of the plant, certain seasonal variations can signicantly affect the fresh water production. Unfortunately, only a few of works have studied the dynamic behavior of renewable-intensied desalination plants. This work wants to bridge the gap in the literature describing the startup procedure of desalination plants in general, emphasizing the critical aspects and providing the general guidelines to start up such plants. Specic considerations are given for geothermal-powered desalination plants as in our previous work [21]. 2. Process and control description Geothermal multi-effect distillation (MED) desalination processes are supplied by geothermal heat through many kinds of technologies

[1,6,14]. In this work we selected the geothermal loop with desalinated water as described in detail elsewhere [13]. As reported in the owsheet of Fig. 1, the geothermal loop is lled by desalinated water by means of the pump P1 and the makeup of fresh water, if needed, is managed by controller PID1 and valve XV1. The pump P2 is placed on the geothermal loop for circulating the water, energy carrier of our system. Specically, the pipelines (S4 and S7) within the geothermal well are designed so as to have the complete evaporation of the water and, at the same time, the tube bundle E1 of the rst effect V1 is designed to induce the total condensation of the steam within the geothermal loop. Thanks to the hydraulic holdup, the steam is generated close to the ground and not in depth, keeping the gas velocities relatively low within the raising pipeline. The use of latent heat only allows to reduce operating costs related to the power consumption of rotating equipment. In the rst effect V1, the geothermal heat vaporizes a portion of the seawater, which is pumped by P3 into the shell side of the effect V1. The brine exits from the rst effects through the stream S14, loses pressure passing through XV5 and enters the second effect V2. In E2, it exchanges heat with the steam generated in the rst effect, which condensates giving desalinated water and generating in turn additional steam in this effect. Brine and steam enter the last effect where the evaporation continues. For the sake of simplicity three effects only are considered in our work, but results can be easily extended to more multi-effects desalination plants. Downstream, a barometric condenser is usually adopted to preserve vacuum conditions along the whole train of effects. The streams of desalinated water are collected in the unit H2 and stored in appropriate tanks. The basic process control scheme to operate the geothermal desalination plant consists of 8 controls. Two of them regulate the seawater ow to be processed and the water lling of the geothermal loop. The remaining six controls regulate the level and the pressure of each effect. 3. Startup of geothermal desalination plant 3.1. State-of-the-art There are several papers dealing with the use of dynamic simulation for desalination plants. For instance, Al-Fulaij and co-workers [22] have studied the dynamics of a multistage ash desalination brine circulation system by means of commercial package. They have provided an interesting sensitivity of the most important operational parameters by means of 15% perturbations. Other authors [23] simulated the process transients of desalination plants by means of energy and mass balances to predict the behavior of the process subject to external perturbations. A similar approach was introduced by Thomas et al. [24], who dened certain guidelines for a numerically stable and easy to implement dynamic simulation for desalination plants. The literature on dynamic simulation is especially dedicated to desalination plants supplied by solar energy. Actually, the discontinuous nature of the solar source imposes somehow the analysis of the transients and energy storage to ensure a continuous production. For example, photovoltaic simulation systems [25] and numerical simulations for traditional solar desalination stills are used to handle certain protability problems related to the quantity of produced fresh water. In the acquaintance of the authors, there are not papers giving the general guidelines and recommendations for the startup of desalination plants, in spite of the importance of startup procedure. It is worth underlining that a mistake in the startup of the plant may lead to delay the plant production or, in the worst cases, to large capital losses and damage. The startup procedure is unavoidably important whenever the plant is supplied by renewable energy since renewable sources can induce certain stiffness in the controllability and operability of the plant. 3.2. Startup procedure There are several ways to startup a geothermal desalination plant, but all of them have the target of safe startup, which means to start

F. Manenti et al. / Desalination 329 (2013) 5761

59

Fig. 1. Flowsheet of the dynamic simulation of a geothermal desalination plant (DYNSIM, Invensys Inc.).

the production as planned and to have no capital losses. The mandatory rule is to keep as much as possible segregated the phenomena that occur in the plant and, in turn, in the single effects. In other words, it is important to start a new operation on the same unit or on another unit when the previous operation has accomplished its dynamics. In such a way possible oscillation redundancies coming from the combination of events and the overlapping of dynamic behaviors and, then, instabilities are prevented. From this perspective, it is necessary to supply the seawater and to ll all the effects at their assigned level, which corresponds to the complete wetting of the tube bundle. As this operation is accomplished, the vacuum condition should be created to predispose the whole desalination train for the fresh water production. At last, the geothermal heat has to be supplied. It will start heating the rst effect and, in cascade, the following ones. Such a procedure allows to keep segregated the operations and maintain under control the relevant variable throughout the whole plant startup. This is not anymore possible whenever the plant is started proceeding from effect to effect; such an approach is unsafe since the vacuum operations on the downstream units have relevant impacts on the upstream unit operations and the plant is subject to strong oscillations for the whole procedure and, sometimes, the startup is accomplished only if the control-room and eld operators are particularly skilled. Specically, with reference to the Fig. 1, the startup procedure implemented includes the following operations: 1 The seawater is pumped in the geothermal desalination plant while pressure controllers are kept in manual mode and the geothermal loop is not yet operating. 1.1 The motor of the pump P2 is started. 1.2 The valve XV8 is completely open. 1.3 The controls PID6 and PID7 are in manual mode with their respective valves completely closed. 2 It is necessary to wait until the level in the rst effect V1 is 2 m height; then, the PID6 is switched in automatic mode. Thus, the depressurization of the second effect starts when the vessel V2 already contains a certain amount of liquid. Such a procedure prevents too low temperatures within the effect, which can cause malfunctions and also damages to the unit operations. Whenever a startup procedure is able to smoothen dangerous behaviors, such as the fast decrease in temperature, there could be the possibility to install units with cheaper materials, with signicant reduction in capital investments.

3 When a certain liquid level (that usually corresponds to the complete wetting of the tube bundle) is achieved also in the second effect V2, the PID7 is switched to the automatic mode for the same reasons as above. 4 At last, only when the liquid level of the last effect V3 is achieved, the geothermal loop is started. Thus, the motors M1 and M3 of the pumps P1 and P3 respectively are switched on and the valves XV2, XV11, and XV12, which are not managed by any controller, are completely open to enable their respective production lines. 4. Simulation results and phenomenological discussion According to the previous startup procedure, the seawater ow rate is supplied before the vacuum operations and the geothermal heat supply. Figs. 2 to 4 show the trend of each effect involved in the dynamic simulation. Note that the effects are progressively lled up by water and rapidly achieves their liquid level setpoint of 2.5 m. As planned in the startup procedure, the effect starts to be lled by liquid only when the previous effect has a level approaching the setpoint. Thus, the lling operation for the third effect has 15 minutes of delay with respect to the rst effect, which is the time required to completely wet the tube

400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

30

60

90

120

150

180

[min]
EFF 1 V1.L{cm} EFF 1 V1.P{kPa} EFF 1 V1.T{K}

Fig. 2. Behavior of effect no. 1.

60

F. Manenti et al. / Desalination 329 (2013) 5761

400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

30

60

90

120

150

180

[min]
EFF2 V2.L{cm} EFF2 V2.P{kPa} EFF2 V2.T{K}

Fig. 3. Behavior of effect no. 2.

bundles within the rst two effects. Note that when the seawater starts owing into an effect, the trend of the level is linear until the proportional-integral control law becomes effective to preserve the assigned liquid level setpoint. The third effect has an additional dynamics with respect to the other that can be understood only later in the phenomenological discussion. It is however worth underlining how the proposed sequence of operations is able to keep segregated the different phenomena involved in the startup of desalination plants. The pressure prole of the effects shows that the segregation is also adopted for the phenomena occurring into the single effects, when possible. As required in the startup procedure, the vacuum of each effect is created only when the upstream unit operations have already accomplished it. Hence, the PID3 that regulates the pressure of the rst effects starts working as a certain level is inside the vessel V1, while the other pressure controllers are disabled. They are enabled only when enough level is present in their respective effect, which unavoidably means that the previous effects have already achieved a stable steady-state condition. In fact, the rst effect achieves the pressure setpoint after 30 min; next, the pressure controller PID6 of the second effect is

400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

30

60

90

120

150

180

[min]
EFF3 V3.L{cm} EFF3 V3.P{kPa} EFF3 V3.T{K}

Fig. 4. Behavior of effect no. 3.

switched in automatic mode and the operations starts for the second effect, which achieves the pressure setpoint after 45 min. At last, the pressure controller PID7 of the third effect is switched in automatic mode after 80 min and the pressure setpoint is achieved 20 min later. The temporary decrease of pressure induces a signicant evaporation of the seawater within the third effect and the liquid level is strongly inuenced by this phenomenon. Whenever the startup procedure does not account for this decomposition of the operations, the last effects can be seriously critical for the whole desalination plant, especially when many effects are physically present, since the oscillations due to the vacuum operations are rather intense and can overlap with the ones due to heat exchange and liquid holdup. The temperature within the effects is directly related to the geothermal heat supplied by the loop of Fig. 1. The geothermal loop is started only when the effects are predisposed with an appropriate liquid level. In fact, whenever the tube bundles inside the effects are not completely wet, safety problems as well as low performances are the typical consequences. Actually, it is worth remarking that if a small portion of the tube bundle is dry, it is subject to sudden temperature increase and mechanical deformation and it is not easy to cool this part simply wetting it; in such cases the plant shutdown is mandatory. Thus, the geothermal loop is started after 25 min and the geothermal heat activates in few minutes the rst effects generating the rst amount of steam. Such a steam is condensed in the following effect and constitutes the rst portion of desalinated water. The latent heat of the condensation of the steam coming from the rst effect heats the second effect until other steam is generated. The procedure is iterated up to the last effect. Please note that the pressure and temperature decrease along the desalination train and that a barometric condenser is usually adopted downstream to preserve the vacuum condition. Hence the steam generated by the last effect is usually lost to maintain low pressures. At last, the pressure decrease in the third effect induces a signicant variation in the temperature. Since it is easy to achieve low temperatures, it is essential to have smooth variations to preserve materials and unit operations. To emphasize certain behaviors, it is easier to analyze the relevant variables of each effect. Fig. 2 shows trends of the rst effect. The pressure slightly decreases while the liquid level increases. This is due to the pressure controller PID3, which is in automatic mode since the beginning of the procedure. When the level is in the neighborhood of the assigned steady state, the geothermal loop is switched on and the temperature and pressure of the effect start increasing up to the required specications. When the level seems to be at the steady-state, an additional perturbation occurs due to the boiling condition that temporarily lowers the liquid level within the effect until the level controller PID4 can handle it. Once again, it underlines the importance to keep the phenomena as much segregated as possible in the startup phase, especially knowing that, as mentioned, whenever a portion of the tube bundle is not wet, it could lead to the total dry condition of the effect in a kind of snowball action leading not only to unit operation failures and breaks, but also to process safety problems. Such a scenario is much more probable in desalination plants supplied by geothermal energy, which is not directly manageable with respect to combustion systems or electrical devices. As mentioned, a similar trend is obtained for the second effect (Fig. 3), but with some minutes of delay with respect to the rst effect. Contrarily to the previous effect, the driving force for water evaporation is given by the vapor coming from the rst effect rather than from the geothermal well. Thus, the dynamics of the rst effect can signicantly inuence the stability of downstream operations. It is therefore mandatory to smooth the existing oscillations induced by upstream operations before starting up completely the effect. Proles for the last effects are reported in Fig. 4. What is important is that a small perturbation upstream can cause a strong perturbation in it. In fact, after almost 1 h 30 min, the second effect has a nal stabilization with a slight increase in the temperature (4 C). This induces a relevant dynamic in the last effect due to the larger quantity of steam arriving from the previous effect. The last trends of Fig. 5 show the dynamics for brine and desalinated

F. Manenti et al. / Desalination 329 (2013) 5761

61

2,5

References
[1] S.A. Kalogirou, Seawater desalination using renewable energy sources, Prog. Energy Combust. Sci. 31 (2005) 242281. [2] E. Manologlou, P. Tsartas, A. Markou, Geothermal energy sources for water production socio-economic effects and people's wishes on Milos island: a case study, Energy Policy 32 (2004) 623633. [3] K. Bourouni, M.T. Chaibi, Optimizing coupling small desalination units to solar collectors: a case study, in: L. Rizzuti, H.M. Ettouney, A. Cipollina (Eds.), Solar Desalination for the 21st Century, 2007, pp. 8392. [4] K. Bourouni, J.C. Deronzier, L. Tadrist, Experimentation and modelling of an innovative geothermal desalination unit, Desalination 125 (1999) 147153. [5] K. Bourouni, R. Martin, L. Tadrist, M.T. Chaibi, Heat transfer and evaporation in geothermal desalination units, Appl. Energy 64 (1999) 129147. [6] M. Goosen, H. Mahmoudi, N. Ghaffour, Water desalination using geothermal energy, Energies 3 (2010) 14231442. [7] V.G. Gude, N. Nirmalakhandan, S.G. Deng, Sustainable low temperature desalination: a case for renewable energy, J. Renew. Sustainable Energy 3 (2011). [8] I. Houcine, F. Benjemaa, M.H. Chahbani, M. Maalej, Renewable energy sources for water desalting in Tunisia, Desalination 125 (1999) 123132. [9] C. Koroneos, G. Roumbas, Geothermal waters heat integration for the desalination of sea water, Desalin. Water Treat. 37 (2012) 6976. [10] O. Sow, T. Mare, J. Or, M. Adj, Modeling and simulation in dynamic mode of a triple effect desalination system coupled to a plane solar collector, Desalin. Water Treat. 22 (2010) 9199. [11] B.W. Tleimat, A.D.K. Laird, The use of geothermal energy in desalination, renewable energy systems and desalinatiuon, Encycl. Desalin. Water Resour. (DESWARE) 1 (2007). [12] E. Tzen, R. Morris, Renewable energy sources for desalination, Sol. Energy 75 (2003) 375379. [13] F. Manenti, M. Masi, G. Santucci, G. Manenti, Parametric simulation and economic assessment of heat integrated geothermal desalination plant, Desalination 317 (2013). [14] V. Belessiotis, E. Delyannis, The history of renewable energies for water desalination, Desalination 128 (2000) 147159. [15] A. Hepbasli, A key review on exergetic analysis and assessment of renewable energy resources for a sustainable future, Renew. Sustainable Energy Rev. 12 (2008) 593661. [16] A. Subramani, M. Badruzzaman, J. Oppenheimer, J.G. Jacangelo, Energy minimization strategies and renewable energy utilization for desalination: a review, Water Res. 45 (2011) 19071920. [17] M.A. Darwish, F.M. Al-Awadhi, A. Akbar, A. Darwish, Alternative primary energy for power desalting plants in Kuwait: the nuclear option I, Desalin. Water Treat. 1 (2009) 2541. [18] C.J. Koroneos, A.L. Polyzakis, D.C. Rovas, Combine desalination cooling plant in Nisyras island utilizing geothermal energy, 2007. [19] B. Tomaszewska, The use of ultraltration and reverse osmosis in the desalination of low mineralized geothermal waters, Arch. Environ. Prot. 37 (2011) 6377. [20] R. Gomri, Thermal seawater desalination: possibilities of using single effect and double effect absorption heat transformer systems, Desalination 253 (2010) 112118. [21] F. Manenti, M. Masi, G. Santucci, G. Manenti, Parametric simulation and economic assessment of a heat integrated geothermal desalination plant, Desalination 317 (2013) 193205. [22] H. Al-Fulaij, A. Cipollina, H. Ettouney, D. Bogle, Simulation of stability and dynamics of multistage ash desalination, Desalination 281 (2011) 404412. [23] H. Ben Bacha, T. Damak, M. Bouzguenda, A.Y. Maalej, H. Ben Dhia, Study of a water desalination station using the SMCEC technique: dynamic modelling and simulation, Desalination 137 (2001) 5361. [24] P.J. Thomas, S. Bhattacharyya, A. Patra, G.P. Rao, Steady state and dynamic simulation of multi-stage ash desalination plants: a case study, Comput. Chem. Eng. 22 (1998) 15151529. [25] R. Chaker, H. Dhaouadi, H. Mhiri, P. Bournot, A TRNSYS dynamic simulation model for photovoltaic system powering a reverse osmosis desalination unit with solar energy, Int. J. Chem. React. Eng. 8 (2010).

1,5

[kg/s]
1 0,5 0 0 30 60 90 120 150 180

[min]
DesWater Brine/10

Fig. 5. Desalinated water and brine ow rates.

water. While the brine starts outowing after 20 min, the desalinated water is started to be produced after 30 min since there is the need to heat all the metal mass of the effects and therefore the water inside them. A stable condition of desalinated water production is achieved after about 3 h since the startup procedure was initiated. Such a startup time is mainly due to the need to keep segregated the phenomena to prevent instabilities as well as to the relevant heat and mass holdups of unit operations and seawater inlet ow. 5. Conclusions The work has provided the general guidelines to startup a desalination plant based on multi-effect distillation (MED) technology. When needed, guidelines are contextualized to geothermal supplied plants accounting for certain peculiarities of such a renewable source. The key aspects are the need to maintain as much as possible segregated the physical phenomena involved in the startup phase in order to prevent every possibility of redundant effects that can lead to process instabilities and hence to process uncontrollability. Special attention is dedicated to the need to preserve the wet condition of tube bundle inside the effects, especially with geothermal sources that are not directly manageable, and to the progressively stabilization of effects along the distillation train, since slight upstream dynamics could induce strong variations to the downstream units.