Performance analysis of hybrid system of multi effect distillation and reverse osmosis for seawater desalination via modelling and simulation

The coupling of thermal (multi stage flash, MSF) and membrane processes (reverse osmosis, RO) in desalination systems has been widely presented in the literature to achieve an improvement of performance compared to an individual process. However, very little study has been made to the combined multi effect distillation (MED) and reverse osmosis (RO) processes. Therefore, this research investigates several design options of MED with thermal vapor compression (MED_TVC) coupled with RO system. To achieve this aim, detailed mathematical models for the two processes are developed, which are independently validated against the literature. Then, the integrated model is used to investigate the performance of several configurations of the MED_TVC and RO processes in the hybrid system. The performance indicators include the fresh water productivity, energy consumption, fresh water purity, and recovery ratio. Basically, the sensitivity analysis for each configuration is conducted with respect to seawater conditions and steam supply variation. Most importantly, placing the RO membrane process upstream in the hybrid system generates the overall best configuration in terms of the quantity and quality of fresh water produced. This is attributed to acquiring the best recovery ratio and lower energy consumption over a wide range of seawater salinity.