desalination:taking ocean water to taps

Uma UpadhyayQuEST Global

Fresh water reserves are becoming hardly usable due to extreme urbanization and industrialization. Groundwater reserves are turningsaline due to seawater intrusion.

contents

1.0 Introduction 03

2.0 Increasing Global Demand for Desalination Plants 03-04

3.0 Desalination Technology Evolution 04

4.0 Reverse Osmosis: Taking care of your Desalination needss 04-05

5.0 Seawater RO Membrane Technology Advancement 06

6.0 Energy Consumption SWRO 07

7.0 Challenges in Desalination Plants 07

8.0 Future Technology Advances 07

9.0 Key Takeaways 07

10 QuEST in Water Domain 08

11 Case Study 09

12 References 09

13 Author Profile 10

14 About QuEST Global 10

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Introduction

Fresh water reserves are becoming hardly usable due to extreme urbanization and industrialization. Groundwater reserves are turning saline due to seawater intrusion. Water demand for agriculture is also rising due to increased population. Stricter norms and regulations restrict industries from using freshwater sources for their industrial needs, thereby giving them no other option but to look for alternate water sources.

According to India Water Review (2012), it is estimated that currently 1.1 billion people across the world do not have access to safe drinking water and more than twice that number are without adequate sanitation. It is estimated that by the year 2025, more than 60% of the world population living in 88 countries is expected to face serious water shortage. Severe water shortages are mainly due to explosive population growth, extensive

changes in human lifestyle, increased industrial activities and pollution. The use of unhygienic quality of water is the root cause for 80%-90% of all diseases in developing countries16.

Having a reliable source of fresh water for the future is of high priority. The need of reliable source of fresh water prompts for a technology that extracts fresh water by removing saline (salt) from bodies of salt water. Desalination is being increasingly realized as the answer to the water crisis of the 21st century.

With this whitepaper, QuEST Global aims to provide clear insights on the desalination technology trends, market, energy consumption, benefits and challenges of the desalination process.

Figure 1: Desalination Market Forecast, June 2011, GWI12

Increasing Global Demand for Desalination Plants

The ever exploding world population, which is expected to reach 7.52 billion by 2020, up from 6.85 billion in 2010, is depleting a limited fresh water supply with agricultural demands and urbanization leading to more water consumption per person across the globe.

Industrialization is spreading advanced water extraction technology, which is quickly diminishing water resources.

At present, desalination is adapted by countries having a greater need for fresh water, have enough money to fund it, and possess the amount of energy required to produce it.

The global desalination market has been forecasted to

hit a market value of $52.4 billion by 2020, a monumental growth of 320.3% from $12.5 billion in 2010, and $18.37 billion in 20123.

The Middle East tops the list of desalinated water usage, due to severe water scarcity. Extensively large desalination plants are present in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel. Countries such as the United States, Spain, Algeria, China, India, and Australia are large producers of desalinated water. Desalination is expected to grow increasingly, particularly in the United States, Libya, China, and India. The below graph represents the desalination market forecast among countries where there is severe scarcity of water.

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Desalination

The above forecast (Figure 1) projects the expected increase in the capacity of new desalination plants. The forecast also shows the capacity of desalination plants from the year 2007-2011. This is an indication of the total capacity of desalination plants.

According to the latest report by GWI, industrial desalination and water reuse technologies market is

expected to approach $12bn by 20254. A new report by Pike Research estimates that the global installed capacity of desalination projects will grow by about 55 million cubic meters per day (m3/d) during the period between 2010 and 2015. About 54 percent of that growth will occur in the Middle East and North Africa5.

Desalination Technology Evolution

Desalination is a process that removes dissolved salts and other minerals from seawater or salty water bodies to provide clean drinking water. The main feature of desalination is that it delivers high quality drinking water for consumption, and industrial purposes even during drought. It also acts as an alternative source of water that could make overall supply more diverse and less vulnerable to interruption. It can be said without any exaggeration that one of the prominent solutions to water scarcity is Desalination.

Desalination started to emerge as a large scale process during the sixties. Various desalination technologies have been developed over the years based on thermal distillation, membrane separation, freezing, electro-dialysis, to mention a few. Commercially, two most important technologies are based on the Multi Stage Flash (MSF) and Reverse Osmosis (RO processes).

Thermal distillation is the oldest form of desalination and was first used to produce drinking water for large urban communities in the early 1950s. Thermal processes accounted for slightly more than 70% of the global desalted water capacity in operation by the year 2000, and are used in majority of the desalination plants with a capacity of more than 100 Million Litre per day (ML/d). Membrane processes using Reverse Osmosis (RO) membranes were first used in the mid 1960s on small desalination systems (less than 10 ML/d).

However, due to continuous improvement in RO technology, more than 70% of the desalination plants installed since 2000, including major facilities with capacities in excess of 100 ML/d, used RO1.

Reverse Osmosis: Taking care of your Desalination needs

Presently, Reverse Osmosis is the most popular desalination process in the world. The water is forced through membranes at high pressure. These membranes remove dissolved salts and other microscopic particles present in the water.

Figure 2 represents the usage of different technologies in desalination:

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Desalination

Figure 2: Usage of different technologies in Desalination; Source: Desalination Technology Market (IRENA, 20122)

60.2%27.1

%

0.8%3.6%

0.3%8.0%

RO MSF MED ED Hybrid EDI

Reverse Osmosis

The below graph suggests the increased adaption of reverse osmosis process for desalination with increase

in the capacity of desalination plants. It also indicates the increase in the usage of RO with respect to time.

Figure 3 shows the GWI’s latest desalination forecast that following a dip in 2012, the volume of new reverse osmosis capacity contracted each year is set to grow to 5.2 million m3/d in 2013, rising to 10.8 million m3/d in 2016.

According to a report by TechSci Research, the Indian water desalination market is expected to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% in the next five years. The estimated market size for India’s water desalination industry is set to reach $0.63 billion by 20147. The increased governmental support and rising demand for fresh water leads to the deployment of more desalination plants across India. The desalination market in India has witnessed phenomenal growth in last three years and has now emerged as a cost-effective solution to the need to provide water. The Indian desalination water market is growing at an annual rate of 30 per cent over a period of five years from 2013 to 2018, according to MSN India, as of April 20138.

The new desalination water facility at Nemmeli (Tamil Nadu, India) is a part of civic drinking water improvements and road infrastructure upgrades valued at about $317 million9.

Minjur desalination plant in the state of Tamil Nadu houses the largest desalination plant in India, with a capacity of 100,000 m³/day (100mld). This desalination plant is capable of serving potable water using Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology and serves an estimated population of 500,000+ in Chennai, India. The second largest plant in India is located at Jamnagar, Gujarat, with a capacity of 96,000 m³/day10. The state governments of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa are also debating the prospects of setting up desalination plant. The state of Gujarat seems to be further along the way towards having its own desalination units. TechSci said, it sees India acting as a growth engine for the global water desalination industry11.

Figure 3: Scaling up the membrane challenge,6 Global Water Intelligence, October 2012.

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Use of High Productivity Elements

The main factor that has contributed to the dramatic change in cost reduction of sea water desalination is the advancement of the Sea Water Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) membrane technology. Presently high-productivity membrane elements are designed with several features that can yield more fresh water per membrane element than at any time in the recent history of this technology. For example, early elements (1970s) were about 4 inches in diameter that displayed flow rates approaching 250 L/h and sodium chloride rejection of about 98.5 percent as compared to one of today’s 16 inch diameter elements capable of delivering 15-30 times more permeate (4000-8000 L/h) with 5 to 8 times less salt passage (hence a rejection rate of 99.7 percent or higher) 13. Although 8 inch SWRO membrane elements are still the ‘standard’ size most widely used in full-scale applications, larger 16 inch and 18 inch size SWRO membrane elements have become commercially available.

In the second half of the 1990s, the typical 8 inch SWRO membrane element had a standard productivity of 5,000 to 6,000 gallons per day (gpd) at a salt rejection of 99.6%. In 2003, several membrane manufacturers introduced high-productivity sea water membrane elements which are capable of producing 7,500 gpd at a salt rejection of 99.75%. Just one year later, even higher productivity (9,000 gpd at 99.7% rejection) sea water membrane elements were released in the market. Over the past four years SWRO membrane elements combining a productivity of 10,000 to 12,000 gpd with high salinity rejection have become commercially available and are now gaining wider project implementation. The newest membrane elements provide flexibility and choice and allow users to trade productivity and pressure/power costs. The same water product quality goals can be achieved in one of the two general approaches: (1) reducing the system footprint/ construction costs by designing the system at higher productivity, and (2) reducing the system’s overall power demand by using more membrane elements, designing the system at lower flux and recovery, and taking advantage of new energy recovery technologies, which further minimize energy use if the system is operated at lower (35% to 45%) recoveries14.

Innovative hybrid membrane configuration combining SWRO elements of different productivity and rejection

within the same vessel, which are sequenced to optimize the use of energy introduced with the feed water to the desalination vessels, is also finding wider implementation.

Use of High Efficiency Pressure Pump

Pumps are responsible for more than 40% of total energy costs at a desalination facility. Energy efficiency advances in a type of pump that is useful for smaller applications (called a positive displacement pump) have made desalination more cost-effective for some applications and locations and less sensitive to electricity price increases17.

An approach for reducing total RO system energy use, which is widely applied throughout the desalination industry is to incorporate larger, higher efficiency centrifugal pumps that serve multiple RO trains. This trend stems from the fact that the efficiency of multistage centrifugal pumps increases with their size (pumping capacity). However, if the RO system configuration is such that a single high pressure pump is designed to service two RO trains of the same size, the efficiency of the high pressure pumps could be increased by up to 85%14.

Use of Energy Recovery Device

With the increasing capacities of SWRO System, it is necessary to use the Brine/Concentrated Stream as an opportunity to reduce the energy consumption by using this brine to pressurize the incoming raw seawater to the system. Advances in Energy Recovery Technology and equipment show a reduction of 80% of the energy use for water production over the last 20 years.

Few years ago, majority of the existing sea water desalination plants used Pelton wheel based technology to recover energy from the SWRO concentrate, but today the pressure exchanger based energy recovery systems dominate in most desalination facility designs.

The weak point of Pelton technology is the formation of a foamy stream that can only be evacuated by gravity, or re-pumped after it has settled.

Pressure Exchanger device, can reduce the amount of energy required to desalinate sea water by up to 60% compared to a process with no energy recovery. This savings can result in more economical production of drinking water and a reduced carbon footprint.

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Desalination

Seawater RO Membrane Technology Advancement

Towards the end of 1970s, SWRO Plant consumed upto 20kWh/m3, but due to advancement in membrane element and energy recovery devices, the energy

consumption has been reduced drastically. Excellent specific energy consumption as low as 1.8-2.2 kWh/m3 can be achieved in new SWRO Plants18.

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Desalination

Energy Consumption SWRO

Key areas of development of RO membrane technology are associated with the increase in the productivity of the membrane elements, their resistance to fouling by the contaminants contained in the source water, and their durability and longevity. The quest for increased productivity of RO membrane elements has taken two directions: (1) development of larger diameter membrane elements and (2) incremental improvements in the SWRO membrane structure, chemistry, spacer size, and configuration, which can allow more flow to be produced by a square inch of RO membrane area with

reduced downtime for membrane cleaning. For future advancement of the Desalination needs one can look up the following areas:

• Focus on Fundamental Understanding of Factors Limiting Desalination Plant Performance• Advancement of Pre-treatment, RO Desalination and Concentrate Disposal Technologies• Development and Demonstration of New Non- RO/Hybrid Technologies• Concentrate Minimization Research• Use of Renewable Power for Desalination

Future Technology Advances

The future of desalination lies in an energy-efficient approach of converting sea-water into fresh water. This approach will make desalination economically feasible. There has been a sudden increase in the number of scientists and engineers involved in the research and development of desalination processes.

Desalination technology has witnessed a lot of public and private investments to develop and optimize the plant designs and operations. Desalination is successful in providing water supplies in the dry regions of the

globe. Despite desalination process costs becoming economically viable, the total cost of desalination, including planning and management remain relatively high and also as against the total costs of other alternatives.

Yet the increasing demand for desalination remains undisputed. It is very imminent to evaluate the current and future financial and economic circumstances that are likely to affect the technology as it advances.

Key Takeaways

Challenges in Desalination Plants

It is very costly to build and operate desalination plants. Once opera tional, plants require huge amounts of energy. Energy costs account for one-third to one-half of the total cost of producing desalinated water. Because energy is such a large portion of the total cost, the cost is also greatly affected by changes in the price of energy

Environmental impacts are another disadvantage to desalination plants. Disposal of the salt removed from

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the water is a major issue. This discharge, known as brine, can change the salinity and lower the amount of oxygen in the water at the disposal site, stressing or killing animals not used to the higher levels of salt. In addition, the desalination process uses and produces numerous chemicals including chlorine, carbon dioxide, hydrochloric acid and anti-sca lents which can be harmful in high concentrations

QuEST Global being one of the leading engineering outsourcing organisation has been involved in various verticals and domain, has the capability to design the water treatment plants based on various advanced technologies like desalination, membrane bio-reactor, and zero-liquid discharge. QuEST Global has a pool of trained engineers with domain knowledge and good project engineering as well as technical skills. The team has expertise in managing and executing projects globally, driving projects through mature processes and ensuring quality deliverables that reduce work.

QuEST engineering team has engineered several desalination treatment plants – RO/UF, EDI. QuEST is involved in complete engineering lifecycle of desalination plants, which includes process engineering, mechanical piping engineering, electricalinstrumentation engineering, control engineering and programmable logic controller (PLC) automation. QuEST is involved in the GA and P&ID preparation, Detail Engineering, Equipments Sizing, Instruments and Valves selection, ordering of the Equipments and BOM preparation.

QuEST aims to provide better engineered solutions by thoroughly evaluating the economic desirability, cost of alternatives, and assessing the environmental conditions. QuEST differentiators are as follow-

• QuEST has client specific secured network, infrastructure & delivery centers• QuEST has the flexible model working environment – onshore, onsite, offshore & local-global• QuEST is capable of managing the workload effectively with 100% focus on quality• 100% focus on product development & support services”• Capable capacity & cost optimization through Local-Global model• Range of flexible operating business models• Ability to build, manage & work with global engineering teams• 15 years of engineering experience with highly mature off-shoring processes• Passionate, agile, flexible and responsive team• Using QuEST team overall project cost can come down around 25-30%

With proven expertise in engineering services, it possesses the capability to offer superior engineering services in water domain.

QuEST water team has 23% mechanical engineers and 36% Engineers are working in Piping/Drafting. QuEST Team capability is shown below in Fig. 4, Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 in terms of experience, Discipline and Education.

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QuEST in Water Domain

Figure 4: QuEST Water Team Experience Distribution

Figure 5: QuEST Water Team distribution based on discipline

Figure 6: QuEST Water Team distribution based on education

QuEST has completed designs to build RO, EDI, UF, MBR based water Treatment plants. A typical engagement with QuEST begins with receiving Proposal/ Pre Bid Engineering Document, Project Specifications as input from the customer. QuEST studies the primary inputs and generate secondary inputs. Mechanical Engineers are involved in the sizing calculations and selection of equipments pumps, blowers, compressors, valve and instruments. Drafting experts are involved in the preparation of Conceptual Piping Layout, MTO Preparation, Modeling and interference check. Electrical Engineers are involved in IO counting & listing and Control Team is involved in the programming and customizing of the PLC logic as per Control Documents; SCADA as per P&IDs for monitoring

the plant units by validation screen using RSview32 for the simulation purpose.

QuEST delivers the P&ID, GAD, Isometrics, Piping Layout, Fabrication Drawings, Bill of Material (BOM), Datasheets, Instruments List, Valve List and Equipment List, Single Line Diagram, Electrical Layout, Tested PLC Logic, SCADA backup, HMI and PLC Testing reports, QMS Checklists, Mechanical & Electrical Production Package to Factory for Fabrication and Assembly.

QuEST Mechanical /Drafting Teams are using softwares like SAP, Bentley PSDS-XM, Microstation. Electrical team is working on Promis-E, AutoCAD software and Control Team is working on Allen Bradley PLC Software & Hardware for PLC automation.

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Case Study

1) Emerging trends in desalination: A review UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science and Technology University of New South Wales Waterlines Report S¬¬¬¬eries No 9, October 2008.

2) http://www.irena.org/DocumentDownloads/Publications/IRE NA-ETSAP%20Tech%20Brief%20I12%20Water-Desalination.pdf

3) http://www.companiesandmarkets.com/News/Energy-and-Utilities/Global-desalination-market-driven-by-the-water- crisis-facing -the-human-race-over-the-next-century/NI5952

4) http://www.globalwaterintel.com/industrial-desalination- water-reuse-technologies-market-approach-12bn-2025/

5) http://e360.yale.edu/digest/market_for_desalination_plants_expected_to_grow_by_87_billion_by_2016/2730/

6) http://www.globalwaterintel.com/archive/13/10/market-profile/scaling-membrane-challenge.html

7) http://www.indiawaterreview.in/Story/News/india-desalination-market-to-grow-at-22-cagr-till-2017/542/1

8) http://news.in.msn.com/business/%E2%80%98water-desalination-has-big-potential-in-india%E2%80%99

9) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-16/chennai-gets-third-water-desalination-plant-times-of-india-says.

html

10) http://www.water-technology.net/projects/minjurdesalination/

11) http://www.livemint.com/Politics/FvpXSl7v5JClJIPjy DLejO/The-desalination-dilemma.html

12) http://www.globalwaterintel.com/archive/12/6/analysis/chart-month-top-ten-desalination-markets-expected- contractedcapacity. html

13) Engineering Aspects of Reverse Osmosis Module Design, J. Johnson & M. Busch, Research Specialist, Research and Development, Dow Water & Process Solutions, 2009.

14) Sea Water Desalination: Current Trend and Challenges, http://www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/ Overvie wofSeawater DesalinationStatusandChallenges

15) www.frost.com/prod/servlet/cio/176353336

16) http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/2065693/india_water_desalination_plants_market_forecast.pdf

17) Desalination and Membrane Technologies: Federal Research and Adoption Issues,Nicole T. Carter, 2013

18) Current trends and future prospects in the design of seawater reverse osmosis desalination technology, B.Peñate & L. García-Rodrígue, 2012

References

http://quest-global.com

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Desalination

Author Profile

Uma UpadhyayUma Upadhyay has around six years of experience in the field of Water and Wastewater. Her professional experience consists of hydraulic designs and estimations of Sewage Treatment Plants of various capacities based on different technologies like Activated Sludge Process, Extended Aeration, Facultative Aerated Lagoon, Reed Bed Systems, and Waste Stabilization Ponds. She has also worked on Design of Pumping Stations, Sewerage Networks and Water Supply Networks.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Uttar Pradesh Technical University, Lucknow, India and a Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India.

She was awarded by Kathpalia Award for the best dissertation during her Masters degree program. She has published a research paper titled, “Anaerbobic Degradation of Benzoate: Batch Study” in the Journal Bioresource Technology. This is available on Science Direct.com.

In her two years at QuEST Global so far, she has worked on Detail Engineering projects related to Reverse Osmosis, Ultra Filtration and Membrane Bio Reactor technologies.

About QuEST Global

QuEST Global is a focused global engineering solutions provider with a proven track record of over 17 years serving the product development & production engineering needs of high technology companies. A pioneer in global engineering services, QuEST is a trusted, strategic and long term partner for many Fortune 500 companies in the Aero Engines, Aerospace & Defence, Transportation, Oil & Gas, Power, Healthcare and other high tech industries. The company offers mechanical, electrical, electronics, embedded, engineering software, engineering analytics, manufacturing engineering and supply chain transformative solutions across the complete engineering lifecycle.

QuEST partners with customers to continuously create value through customer-centric culture, continuous improvement mind-set, as well as domain specific engineering capability. Through its local-global model, QuEST provides maximum value engineering interactions locally, along with high quality deliveries at optimal cost from global locations. The company comprises of more than 7,000 passionate engineers of nine different nationalities intent on making a positive impact to the business of world class customers, transforming the way they do engineering.