A novel water freezing desalination plant integrated into a combined gas power cycle plant

In this work, a freezing desalination unit is integrated into a conventional combined power plant to improve the plant performance and produce desalinated water. A mathematical model is developed to simulate the modified cycle. The effect of compressor inlet air temperature on thermal performance, desalinated water production capacity and specific fuel consumption is examined. Results of the modified cycle were compared to that of the conventional cycle. The results show that the proposed system is capable of producing up to 2.74 million m3of desalinated water annually from a brackish water source (TDS of 2000 mg/l) with an increase in the Energy Utilization Efficiency (EUE) by 15% as compared to the designed value under ISO standard conditions. Furthermore, operation cost for fresh water production is also examined, results show that the fuel cost of 1 m3 of desalinated water varies between (0.56-0.58) $/m3 compared with 0.66 $/m3 and 0.93 $/m3 for desalination technologies of R. O and MED, respectively.

Automated summary

This study integrates a freezing desalination unit into a conventional power plant to improve performance and produce desalinated water. A mathematical model is used to simulate the modified cycle and analyze the effects of compressor inlet air temperature on thermal performance and fuel consumption. Results show that the proposed system can efficiently produce a large amount of desalinated water and increase energy utilization efficiency. Additionally, the operational cost for desalinated water production is compared with other desalination technologies.