CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF A HYBRID SEAWATER DESALINATION SYSTEM COMBINING REVERSE OSMOSIS WITH FREEZE DESALINATION AND EVAPORATIVE CRYSTALLIZATION

Seawater desalination significantly contributes to meeting the growing global demand for freshwater. The desalination process generates significant quantities of high salinity brine, posing an environmental threat. Further desalination of the high salinity brine at zero liquid discharge (ZLD) can be applied to eliminate the liquid reject and generate freshwater. So far, the available studies unanimously reported the significantly high energy consumption linked to treating the reject brine to achieve ZLD. To address this challenge, this study introduces a conceptual design of a ZLD desalination system characterized by high energy efficiency. The study describes the system components and the operational sequence in detail. The study also shows the models developed throughout this work necessary for further energy analysis of the proposed system. The results highlight the increased energy efficiency of the proposed desalination system compared to the classical ZLD methods, by comparing the fuel consumption in the two cases. The contributions of this study lie in the newly proposed ultra-efficient ZLD desalination concept and the developed models necessary for the design, control and further analysis of the proposed system.