Cost evaluation and optimisation of hybrid multi effect distillation and reverse osmosis system for seawater desalination

In this research, the effect of operating parameters on the fresh water production cost of hybrid Multi Effect Distillation (MED) and Reverse Osmosis (RO) system is investigated. To achieve this, an earlier comprehensive model developed by the authors for MED + RO system is combined with two full-scale cost models of MED and RO processes collected from the literature. Using the economic model, the variation of the overall fresh water cost with respect to some operating conditions, namely steam temperature and steam flow rate for the MED process and inlet pressure and flow rate for the RO process, is accurately investigated. Then, the hybrid process model is incorporated into a single-objective non-linear optimisation framework to minimise the fresh water cost by finding the optimal values of the above operating conditions. The optimisation results confirm the economic feasibility of the proposed hybrid seawater desalination plant.