Desalinated Water Costs from Steam, Combined, and Nuclear Cogeneration Plants Using Power and Heat Allocation Methods

This work presents a detailed thermo-economic analysis of unit water costs from dual-purpose cogeneration plants. The power levelized cost was first calculated for stand-alone steam, nuclear, and combined-cycle energy needed to operate the desalination systems connected plants evaluated based on two different approaches: power- heat-allocated methods. Numerical models heat mass balances plants’ components were developed validated. Comprehensive updated data generated using Desaldata libraries correlated estimate capital, labor, overhead, maintenance systems. produced by multi-effect distillation, distillation with vapor compression, multi-stage flash, reverse osmosis estimated. impact various controlling parameters, including price natural gas, nuclear plant installation cost, capacity investigated. For all simulated cases, method found be lower 25–30% compared that estimated power-allocated method. remains below other technologies. However, narrows gap between seawater osmosis. results also show use process in configuration rather than compression can result cost. profit shows slight differences system plain system.