Thermal Desalination: and Integration in Clean Power and Water

A large number of resources are dedicated to seawater desalination and will only grow as world-wide water scarcity increases. In arid areas with high temperature and salinity seawater, thermal desalination and power plants (dual-purpose/co-generation plants) are often employed for the production of power and water. In other areas, reverse osmosis is commonly employed. However, both technologies are inherently challenged with economic and performance issues. Seawater desalination methods, in particular thermal desalination methods, are highly energy intensive and are associated with C0 2 -emitting electricity production. This thesis is presented with three chapters, each of which is self-contained, but have a unifying goal of improving industrial-scale thermal desalination and its integration with power production or other technologies. The first chapter presents a critical review of hybrid desalination systems for cogeneration of power and water. Hybrid desalination, i.e., employing both thermal and mechanical desalination methods, is a response to the issues associated with existing seawater desalination technologies and has been increasingly utilized over thermal desalination plants alone. An overview of thermal desalination, seawater reverse osmosis, and co-generation of power and water is presented, specifically with regards to the motivation for utilizing hybrid plants, e.g., process limitations and areas of potential improvement. In addition, a review of the considerations for design and economics of hybrid desalination plants is presented, e.g., existing system configurations, thermoeconomic analyses, and improvements of seawater pretreatment are discussed. Finally, studies for the optimization of hybrid desalination systems are reviewed. Specifically, the use of objective functions, continuous optimization methods, and optimal hardware configurations are discussed with respect to the key considerations of hybrid desalination plants. The purpose of the second chapter is to investigate the integration of thermal desalination methods with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) electricity production in order to implement emissions-free thermal desalination facilities. Specifically,