Economic analysis for process optimization of Chabahar Maritime University reverse osmosis desalination plant: a case study

Abstract

Abstract Seawater desalination is a way ahead to produce tap water in the Iranian coastline of the Oman sea with arid climate. The Chabahar Maritime University (CMU) desalination plant which its prototype was launched in 1994, currently using the reverse osmosis (RO) membranes is producing fresh water with a capacity of 336 m3/day and TDS of 400. Here, it is attempting to draw the plant overall scheme and to produce the technical documents of its constituent parts. An experimental study was conducted to estimate the current working conditions of this RO desalination site, and a simple formulation method using by Microsoft Excel 2010 is developed to model and optimize the cost and processing parameters such as active surface area of the membrane in the RO desalination plant. The mode of site’s economic estimation provides a way to find the optimal working conditions including feed flow rate, recovery ratio and so on. The results indicate that with some small adjustments in the process, the cost of water can be dramatically reduced. For example, with an increase in the flow rate of the intake feed water from 840 to 5784 m3/day, cost of product water reduces from 2.2 $/m3 to 1.4 $/m3.

Keywords

• Economic analysis
• Process optimization
• Desalination
• Chabahar Maritime University
• Reverse osmosis