(144d) Synthesis of Macroscopic Networks for Water Desalination and Distribution

The scarcity of fresh water resources in certain areas of the world necessitates the development of sustainable strategies for seawater desalination and the distributions of desalinated water. The objective of this paper is to introduce a new approach to the design and decision making of desalination and distribution networks for water supply in regions (or countries). Because of the complexity of the addressed problem, a systems approach is adopted. First, a source-interception-sink representation is developed to embed potential configurations of interest. Next, the design problem is formulated as an optimization problem subject to the supply, demand, mass conservation, technical performance, and economic constraints. Composition and characteristics (properties) of water are considered in formulating the problem constraints. This approach determines the type of technologies to be selected, the necessary treatment to adjust composition and properties, the location and capacity of the desalination plants, and the distribution of the desalinated water from sources to destinations.