Seawater desalination technologies are less common in the United States for providing municipal potable water than in other places around the world for a number of reasons, including: high capital and energy costs, acquisition of coastal land for development, resulting energy source-dependent CO2 emissions, and environmental impacts of saline water intake and concentrate discharge. Seawater desalination does offer several benefits, however, including abundance of feed water, resiliency against droughts and water scarcity, reliability - more predictable variation in total water cost over time in regions where rights to freshwater sources are contentious, and potential for renewable energy storage.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) is working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Energetics Incorporated to prepare an
Energy-Water Bandwidth Study of Seawater Desalination Systems. This AIChE presentation will review the various types of technologies used in seawater desalination systems and their associated energy use in the U.S., and present a summary of the energy savings opportunity for upgrading seawater desalination systems in the U.S.
The initial background research has been published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in Volume 1,
here. The Energy-Water Bandwidth Study will be published by AMO later this summer.
Webinar content is available with the kind permission of the author(s)
solely for the purpose of furthering AIChE’s mission to educate, inform
and improve the practice of professional chemical engineering. All other
uses are forbidden without the express consent of the author(s). For
permission to re-use, please contact
chemepermissions@aiche.org.