INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ROORKEE

Review of advances in the area of Modelling , Simulation,

Optimization and Control of Desalination Process

Submitted by:
Under Guidance of:
Anubhav Goel, Research Scholar (17924011)
Dr. Gaurav Manik, Assistant Professor
Department of Polymer and Process Engineering
Department of Polymer and Process Engineering
IIT Roorkee, Saharanpur Campus
IIT Roorkee, Saharanpur Campus
Index

 Motivation
 Introduction
 Desalination
 Desalination Processes
 Desalination Processes- using renewable energy
 Optimization, Modelling and Simulation problems – An Introduction
 Water Desalination status in the Globe
 Desalination Barriers
 Future Recommendations
 Summery and Conclusion
 References
 Appendix -I

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Introduction

Desalination

“According to a recent report by

World Health Organization
(WHO), only 71% of the global
population (5.2 billion people)
uses safe drinking water while
remaining lack even basic
drinking water services [1]”

Figure Source: Ahmed El Mekawy et. al, “The near-future integration of microbial desalination cells with reverse osmosis technology.”

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Can we drink saline water?

• Saline Water - water that is saline contains significant amounts (referred

to as "concentrations") of dissolved salts, the most common being the salt
we all know - sodium chloride (NaCl).
• Small quantities are not harmful, but it is counterproductive (it just
makes you more thirsty!)
• Eventually, it can be dangerous, ultimately producing fatal seizures, heart
arrhythmias and kidney failure
• Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) represents the total concentration of
dissolved elements in water.
A TDS ˂ 300 mg/l is excellent,
300-600 mg/l is good
and ˃ 1200 mg/l is undesirable for humans [2]

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Nature’s Desalination Plant

Source: Dreamstime.com

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Desalination
• Desalination is a process that extracts salts and mineral components from
saltwater to render it suitable for drinking , irrigation or industrial uses.

Energy

Separation
Feed Water Fresh Water
Process

Rejected
Brine

• Currently, 59% seawater, 23% brackish water, 7% rivers, 5% wastewater

and 6% other sources are used for desalination [3].
• Currently, ≈1% of world’s population is dependent on desalinated water
to meet daily needs, but UN (United Nations, Human Rights) expects
that 14% of the world’s population will encounter water scarcity by
2025.
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Desalination processes

Separation Processes

Thermal Membrane

Multi Stage Flash Multiple Effect Reverse Osmosis Electro-Dialysis

(MSF) Distillation (MED) (RO) (ED)

Vapour
Humidification-
Compression-
Dehumidification
Mechanical (MVC)
(HDH)
and Thermal (TVC)

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Thermal Desalination Process
MED

HDH

MSF

These processes imitates the nature’s desalination process as they comprise

evaporation and condensation via different schemes to produce fresh water.

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Membrane Based Desalination Process

1. RO is the most widely used method for desalination that uses a semi-permeable
membrane which resists salts passage.

2. In electrodialysis (ED) system, a direct current is passed through the water, which
drives the ions (not the water) through membranes to electrodes of opposite charge .

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Desalination Processes- using
renewable energy

Source: “Modelling and simulation of Desalination Process using Artificial Neural Network: A review”
Rajesh Mahadeva, Gaurav Manik, Om Prakash Verma

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Solar powered desalination plants

• Indirect solar desalination

systems:-
Indirectly: as an energy source –
solar energy is converted to
electrical energy using PV arrays
and utilized to power desalination
process.
• Direct solar desalination systems:-
Directly converts solar energy to
heat and use it to power the
desalination process

Source: John H Reif et. al, “ Solar thermal power desalination – Its significant challenges and potential.”

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Solar desalination

Desalination
using Solar
Energy

Indirect Solar
Direct solar
Desalination
desalination
(PV)

Solar Still Solar Chimney

RO, MED,
Solar HDH MSF, TVC, ED
Solar Pond
Desalination

Solar
Concentrators

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Solar Still

Source: Solar desalination schematic Sustainable sanitation, water management, 2012. Desalination.

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Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST)
Technologies

Source: M I Roldán Serrano, “Concentrating Solar Thermal Technologies ”

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Optimization, Modelling and
Simulation Problems – A classification
Optimization
Model
Problems
Input ? Output
Known
Specified

Modelling Problems
Model
Input Output

Known
?
Known

Simulation Problems Model

Input Output ?
Known
Known

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Optimization, Modelling and
Simulation – In Desalination
S.No. Title Author(s) Remarks
1. Modeling and optimization of a solar Tzuc et. al. An artificial neural network inverse (ANNi)
parabolic trough concentrator system (2017) model is applied to optimize the thermal
using inverse artificial neural network. performance (η) of parabolic trough
concentrators
2. Optimal Design of a Solar Desalination Abidi et. al. Design to improve the yield of a solar
Unit with Heliostats. (2017) desalination cell using concentration of solar
rays by means of automatically controlled
heliostats
3. Modelling and simulation of Multi Maha et. al. MED plant with three effects is simulated
Effect Distillation plant (SIDEM Unit) (2017) using Aspen HYSYS
4. Dynamic modeling and simulation of a de la Calle et. al. The model covers the whole operation range of
solar-assisted multi-effect distillation (2015) the plant and used to study the plant
plant performance in different scenarios and
operating strategies to optimize future
operating control strategies.
5. Performance optimization study on an Liu et. al. A novel small-sized integrated solar
integrated solar desalination system (2014) desalination system with multi-stage
with multi-stage evaporation/heat evaporation/heat recovery processes is
recovery processes designed and tested
6. Performance simulation of a multi- Shim et. al. a performance evaluation of a multi-vacuum
VMD desalination process including (2014) membrane distillation (VMD) module was
the recycle flow conducted using a one-dimensional model.
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Water Desalination in the world

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Water salinity status - India

Source: MIT News

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Desalination Plants in India

Source: Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.

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Major desalination plants in India

• Minjur Seawater Desalination Plant – 100 MLD ( Million litres a

day) in Tamil Nadu – inaugurated in 2010
• Nemmeli Seawater Desalination Plant – 100 MLD in Tamil Nadu –
inaugurated in 2013

• In partnership with Gujarat government, a group of Singaporean

and Japanese companies, such as Hyflux, Itochu and Hitachi are
developing Asia’s largest desalination plant of 336 MLD capacity
with an investment of INR 4,000 crore in Dahej, Gujrat.

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Recent Development

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Recent Development

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IDA: International Desalination Association

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Desalination Barriers

 Cost

 Energy Consumption

 Scaling

 Environment Impact

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Desalination Barriers

• Cost:
Desalination process involves lot of cost in terms of
 Plant construction
 Fuels
 Maintenance etc.

• Energy consumption:
Water desalination consumes a huge amount of energy that is obtained by
burning fuel or using electric energy or nuclear energy, and thus raise
CO2 levels or complications of nuclear leakage.

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 Desalination Barriers
• Environmental Impact:
 Rejection of brine back into sea, which while delivering into the sea
possess large amount of dissolved salts in it , and this has a negative
effect on the marine life.
 Burning of fossil fuels to obtain energy also posts an threat.

• Scaling:
What is scaling?
The accumulation of salt particles on the desalination plant components.

How to minimize scaling?

Addition of chemicals, like Polyphosphate

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Proposed Work

MATLAB Modelling
Environment and
Simulation

Optimization
techniques : Desalination Process
PSO, GA, Etc (Using Solar
Energy)

Proposed work is to use MATLAB as a tool for Modelling, simulation,

Optimization and Control of Desalination process

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Conclusion and Future Scope

Water being necessary for consumption, household usage, industry

production, and agriculture, its demand will rise with economic and
population growth.
Desalination of seawater and brackish water is accepted as an alternative
source to fulfil growing water demand.
The benefits of desalination are straightforward: more water. The drawback,
unfortunately, is the cost and Environmental impact.
Find alternatives to energy used for the desalination process: through the
use of renewable energy such as solar or wind power.
If technology continues to produce new methods and better solutions to the
issues that exist today, there would be a whole new water resource for more
and more countries that are facing drought, competition for water, and
overpopulation.

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References
1. World Health Organization, UNICEF, “Progress on Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: 2017 Update and SDG baselines” Geneva,
Switzerland, 2017.
2. Masoumeh Heibati, Colin A. Stedmon, Karolina Stenroth, Sebastien Rauch, Jonas Toljander, Melle Save-Soderbergh, Kathleen R.
Murphy “Assessment of drinking water quality at the tap using fluorescence spectroscopy “ Water Research 125 (2017) 1-10.
3. Muhammad Wakil Shahzad, Muhammad Burhan, Li Ang, Kim Choon Ng, “Energy-water-environment nexus underpinning future
desalination sustainability” Desalination 413 (2017) 52-64.
4. Domingo Zarzo, Daniel Prats, “Desalination and energy consumption. What can expect in the near future?” Desalination, 2017,
Elsevier.
5. M.I. Roldán Serrano, “Concentrating Solar Thermal Technologies”, Green Energy and Technology, Springer, 2017
6. Ahmed L Elsafty et. Al. “Experimental investigation for a new solar desalination system”. Energy Procedia 36 (2013), 676-686,
Elsevier.
7. Zhen-Hua Liu, Hong-Yang Guan, Guo-Shan Wang, “Performance optimization study on an integrated solar desalination system with
multi-stage evaporation/heat recovery processes” Energy 76 (2014) 1001-1010, Elsevier.
8. Wensheng Caoa, d,e, Qiang Liuc, Yongqing Wanga, d,e, Iqbal M. Mujtabab, “Modeling and simulation of VMD desalination process
by ANN”, Computers and Chemical Engineering 84 (2016), 96–103.
9. E. S. Salami, M. Ehetshami, A. Karimi-Jashni, M. Salari, S. Nikbakht Sheibani, A. Ehteshami, “A mathematical method and artificial
neural network modelling to simulate osmosis membrane’s performance”, Model. Earth Syst. Environ. (2016), 2:207.
10. Fakhreddin Salehi & Seyed M.A. Razavi, “Modeling of waste brine nanofiltration process using artificial neural network and adaptive
neuro fuzzy inference system”, Desalination and Water Treatment 57 (2016), 14369–14378.

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References
10. Chandra Sekhar Bandi, R. Uppaluri, Amit Kumar, “Global optimization of MSF seawater desalination processes”, Desalination 394
(2016), 30–43.
11. Sangkeum Lee a, Sunghee Myung a, Junhee Hongb, Dongsoo Har, “Reverse osmosis desalination process optimized for maximum
permeate production with renewable energy”, Desalination 398 (2016), 133–143
12. Lee JG, Kim WS “Numerical modelling of the vacuum membrane distillation process” Desalination 2013;331:46–55.
13. Lovineh SGh, Asghari M, Rajaei B. “Numerical simulation and theoretical study on simultaneous effects of operating parameters in
vacuum membrane distillation” Desalination 2013;314:59–66.
14. Shim SM, Lee JG, Kim WS. “Performance simulation of a multi-VMD desalination process including the recycle flow” Desalination
2014;338:39–48.
15. Zuo G, Guan G, Wang R. “Numerical modeling and optimization of vacuum membrane distillation module for low-cost water
production” Desalination 2014;339:1–9.
16. Xiong, B., Zydney, A.L., Kumar, M., “Fouling of microfiltration membranes by flow back and produced waters from the Marcellus
shale gas play” Water Res. 99, 162e170, 2016.
17. Water Desalination Report, Volume 53, Number 38, “The international weekly for desalination and advanced water treatment since
1965”, 23 October 2017.
18. Pankaj M. Pardeshi, Alka A. Mungray∗, Arvind K. Mungray, “Determination of optimum conditions in for ward osmosis using a
combined Taguchi–neuralapproach”, chemical engineering research and design 109 (2016), 215–225.
19. Saeed Shirazian, Masoud Alibabaei, “Using neural networks coupled with particle swarm optimization technique for mathematical
modelling of air gap membrane distillation (AGMD) systems for desalination process”, Neural Computing & Applications (2017),
28:2099–2104.

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Thank you….

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