Track F: Water Resources & management

(Water Resources & Hydrology)

Sea Water Desalination- Water Centric

Approach

Ar. Chintan Shah

Faculty of Architecture, Sarvajanik College of Engineering & Technology, Surat
chintan_arch@yahoo.co.in
Contact Number: 09712182767

Ar. Julie Vaidya

julie_vaidya@yahoo.com
Faculty of Architecture, Sarvajanik College of Engineering & Technology, Surat
Contact Number: 09879542421

Guided by: Prof. Alpa Pandya

Alpa.pandya@scet.ac.in
Faculty of Architecture, Sarvajanik College of Engineering & Technology, Surat

ABSTRACT

Earth is the only planet in the solar system where life exists, the reason being livable climatic conditions and abundant water
resources. Despite having 71% of its surface covered with water, many parts of the world are facing water crisis. The only option to
meet rising demand of water is through utilization of sea water by desalination process. Today millions of cubic meter of fresh water
is produced by desalination every day and the new plants are being installed coherently world-wide. This research will provide
information about how saline water is recycled into potable water by means of Desalination process.

KEY WORDS: Desalination, Water Treatment, Thermal
& membrane process.
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The pre-historic and the old civilization established
themselves near water sources. The importance of
water quality for drinking purpose was apparent to our
ancestors. These treatments originally focused on
improving the aesthetic and sight qualities of drinking
water. Ancient writings of Sanskrit and Greek
recommended water treatment processes such as
filteration from charcoal, sunlight exposure, straining
and boiling. During 18th century, filtration process was
based on purification the water to remove the presence
of colloidal particles and impurities. During mid of
1800, scientists gained the understanding of the sources
of water and how micro-organisms could transmit
disease through water. During 19 th and 20th century the
focus was mostly on diseases causing microbes known
as pathogenic bacteria in public water supplies. The
clean and reliable water supply requirement was not
recognized until the second half of 19 th century when
the nature of infectious disease was formed. Thus,
water supply became the major source to transmit the
diseases. The procedure of making water appropriate
for certain uses such as at home, industry or any other
use is called treatment of water.
1.1 WATER TREATMENT METHODS
Water treatment is done to eradicate contaminants,
unwanted components and reduce their concentration
so that it becomes fit for its required productive uses.
Substances that are generally omitted during the
process of drinking water treatment includes viruses,
fungi, bacteria, algae, suspended solids,
and minerals such as iron and manganese. This
drinking water treatment includes processes such as
settling and filtration, and biological processes such
as slow sand filtration. Measures taken to ensure water

NHCE-17 Page 1
quality not only relate to the treatment of the water, but
also to its conveyance and distribution after treatment.
It is therefore common practice to keep remaining
disinfectants in the purified water to kill bacteriological
infection during supply.
Fig 1. Empty aeration tank for iron precipitation, Tanks with
sand filters to remove precipitated iron.
An amalgamation selected from the following methods
given below is used for household drinking water
treatment world over:
Pre-chlorination is done to control algae and
biological growth in water.
Aeration is done to remove dissolved iron
along with little amounts of manganese.
Coagulation is done for slow-sand filtration.
Sedimentation is the process of separating
solids i.e. removal of suspended solids
trapped in the floc.
Filtration to remove particles from water by
passage through a purpose designed filter that
may be washable.
Disinfection is the practice of killing
pathogens and viruses from bacteria.
Fig 2. Typical surface Water Treatment Plant.
2.0 BACKGROUND TO DESALINATION
Desalination is a process that removes salt and
minerals from saline water and makes the water fit for
consumption or other domestic or industrial uses. The
one by-product of desalination is salt which is later
reused for other purposes or released into sea. Along
with recycled wastewater, it is one of the few rainfall-
independent water sources. Due to its high energy
NHCE-17
intake, desalinating sea water is found to be more
costly than fresh water from rivers, groundwater or
other water sources. However, these alternatives are not
always available and running down of water reserves is
a critical problem worldwide. Currently, about 1% of
the world's population is dependent on desalinated
water to meet daily needs, but the UN expects that 14%
of the world's population will run into water scarcity by
2025.
According to the International Desalination
Association, in June 2015, 18,426 desalination plants
are operating world over, giving water to 300 million
people with production of 86.8 million cubic meters
per day. These figures increased 10.71% in 2 years
from 78.4 million cubic meters in 2013.
Kuwait converts higher proportion of its desalinated
water in comparison to other countries and is
completely dependent on this process for its water
needs. [1]
In India, various industrial and developmental activities
in recent times have resulted in increasing the pollution
level and deteriorating water quality. The water
demand in the country is increasing rapidly due to
advanced increase in the demand of water for various
purposes such as irrigation, population growth, high
industrialization and improving life standards of
people. The existing water resources are diminishing (i)
due to inadequate distribution of rain water and
frequent famines, (ii) excessive misuse of ground water
sources and its deficient recharge, (iii) decline of water
quality due to the release of domestic and industrial
effluents without satisfactory treatment. This results
into water stress and shortage. There are areas like
Saurashtra and Kutch, Western Rajasthan and the
coastal regions of Tamil Nadu etc. which face perennial
water shortage. In addition, a large number of villages
in different parts of the country are prone to suffer from
excess of fluoride, salinity, iron, arsenic and microbial
contagions of ground water. Desalination is considered
as a possible means to meet the water supply needs
using natural resources for fulfilling the growing
demand of water. Seawater, brackish water and fresh
water have different levels of salinity, which is often
articulated by the total dissolved solids (TDS)
concentration. Water is considered potable when its
TDS is below 500 mg/L. Seawater has a TDS of about
35,000 mg/L and brackish water has a TDS between
that of potable water and seawater [2]. Waste water
also contains dissolved salts majorly in the lower
brackish level. The refined water from waste water can
be used for irrigation, domestic water and other
industrial applications.
Page 2
 Fig 4. Image showing coastal belt of India where water
scarcity can be met by means of Desalination.
Located on the east coast of Southern India, Chennai
2.1 METHODS & TECHNIQUES OF city is amongst the largest Metropolitan region in the
DESALINATION country. The main sources of water supply to the
The two main commercial desalination Chennai city is from surface water sources such as
technologies are those based on thermal and Poondi, Cholavaram and Redhills reservoirs and also
membrane processes. Other techniques includes from ground water sources from Araniar and
Multi Stage Flash Process, Multieffect distillation
process, Desalination using waste heat, Reverse
Osmosis, Hybridization, Co-generation using
Nuclear energy.

Fig 3. Desalination of water using Reverse Osmosis method
for purification of water.
3.0 DESALINATION PLANTS ACROSS INDIA
A number of coastal regions in India are turning to
desalination and reverse osmosis treatments. At
present, Indian desalination market with coastline of
7,517 km is at approximately US$660 MN.
Desalination water technology is widely used in water
scarce states such as Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and
Rajasthan. Many big Industries such as Nirma,
Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Ltd, Indian Rayon are
exploring the option of using sea water for their
industries.
3.1 CASE STUDY: PROCURING POTABLE
WATER BY MEANS OF DESALINATION IN
CHENNAI, INDIA
Korataliar basin.
Fig 5. Table showing present and future projection of
population & urban agglomeration of Chennai in relation
with its water demand .
Drinking water supply sources in Chennai city are
majorly monsoon dependent and the city experiences
water scarcity frequently. The drinking water demand
for Chennai and its Urban Agglomeration has been
estimated at 1462 MLD in the year 2016 and 1560
MLD in the year 2019. But, the water supply is
expected to be 840 MLD, and has a supply demand gap
of 720MLD. Therefore, Chennai's Metropolitan Water
Supply and Sewage Board recently announced that a
desalination plant has been set up that would supply
100 million litres per day (MLD) of drinking water to
the parched city. It will be a plant that would supply
water once in three days, even if all the reservoirs ran
dry. The plant is in Minjur district of Chennai, and is
being implemented under policy of DEBOOT, ie,
design, build, own, operate, transfer. The transfer will
be after 25 years. A special project vehicle was created,
IVRCL, with Befessa of Spain, for the the company
which will implement this project. An agreement has
been made to buy that water from them at Rs.48.66 per
kilo litre, which is less than 5 paise per litre. This rate
is fixed for only one year and after that the rates get
flexible and will rely on the rate of power supplied to
them. For supplying every 100 MLD of water they
will be using 237 MLD of seawater. After desalination
the remaining 137 MLD will be pumped back into the
sea. The process results in the temperature of water
going up by 5 degrees. It is appropriate up to 7 degrees
by international standards, as here the difference will
not exceed more than 5 degrees. As for salinity, the

NHCE-17 Page 3
area affected is only 50 metres by 100 metres and
beyond that it completely dissipates in the seawater and
this will not affect sea life. The present cost of water to
Chennai is Rs 7 per kilo litre when it gets it from our
reservoirs, Rs 12 per kilo litre when it gets it from the
Veeranam project. The desalination plant water is
almost Rs 49 kilolitre and is expensive in comparison
to water treated from other technologies.
3.2 CASE STUDY: PROCURING POTABLE
WATER BY MEANS OF DESALINATION IN
GULF COUNTRIES
There are many water desalination processes used in
Gulf Countries and they are divided into two
Categories, the first category is based on thermal
processes while the second category is based on
membranes processes. The following is an explanation
on water desalination processes used to produce
desalinated water in Gulf countries plants:
(i) MULTI STAGE FLASHING (MSF)
Fig 6. Image showing process of Desalination using MSF
process.
The process depends on heating salt water up to a
certain temperature between 90 and 120 C in brine
heaters. Then the water is pumped to a series of
consecutive low-pressure chambers (which are under
vacuum), the water flashes as it enters each chamber
and produce water vapor at entering temperature of
each chamber. Salt water temperature reduces as it
passes through the different chambers and hence the
vacuum pressure keeps reducing to ensure flash
evaporation in all the chambers. The rising water vapor
from the chambers gets condensed on outer surface of
feed water tube bundle producing desalinated water
and also results in preheating the feed water before
entering the brine heater which will reduce the energy
required for heating.
NHCE-17
(ii) MULTIPLE EFFECT DISTILLATION (MED)
Fig 7. Image showing process of Desalination using MED
process.
Similar to MSF, MED is made of multiple stages (or
effect chambers) using the principle of reducing the
vacuum in different chambers which enables the salt
water to boil repeatedly without adding additional heat
after the first effect chamber. The main principle of
Multi Effect Desalination process which takes place
when hot steam is supplied to the first effect tube
bundle and latent heat transfer to the thin film of salt
water falling by gravity on the outer surface of the tube
bundle causing it evaporate and produce water vapor.
The produced vapor in the first effect is forced to flow
inside the tube bundle of the second effect through
demister pads and the process continues in all effects.
Water vapor produced in the last stage gets condensed
in final condenser which is cooled by sea water and
works also as heat reject section for the unit. Part of the
sea water at the final condenser outlet is filtered and
used as feed water for the different effects by spraying
it equally over the tube bundles.
(iii) VAPOR COMPRESSION (VC)
This process is often used in tourist resorts, industries
and well excavation sites. The heat required for
evaporation comes from compressing the vapor instead
of direct heat transfer from steam produced in boilers.
In this process, a mechanical compressor driven by
electric motor or a steam ejector is used to create
vacuum inside evaporation chamber, which will cause
the water to evaporate at the feed water temperature.
The produced vapor is compressed till its temperature
increase and subsequently becoming the source of heat
required to evaporate another part of feed water. The
pressurized vapor is pumped to the shell side of tubes
Page 4
containing salt water causing the vapor to condense on
the outer surface of tubes and also heating the salt
inside the tubes producing additional quantities of
water vapor which will be compressed again so the
cycle will continue to produce condensed water as
product water.
Fig 8. Image showing process of Desalination using VC
process.
4. CONCLUSION
With the growing population and increasing urban area
around the world, the need of fresh water has become a
necessity for our living. Desalination process can be
seen as a solution for our water needs. But it has its
own limitations as it is very energy consuming, cost
expensive and creates environmental concerns for sea
water.
NHCE-17
All these issues cannot be neglected and there is a
severe need of the technology up gradation to
overcome these drawbacks. Also, researchers need to
find alternate methods of filtering water in bulk which
should be very efficient and beneficial to our needs
without disrupting the ecosystem.
REFERENCES
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
[2] http://www.barc.gov.in/publications/tb/desalination.pdf
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_treatment
[4] https://www.google.co.in/url?
sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=
8&ved=0ahUKEwiAgMio-
aLSAhWLso8KHdUbD_MQFggoMAA&url=https%3A%2F
%2Fvibrantgujarat.com%2Fwritereaddata%2Fimages%2Fpdf
%2Fproject-profiles%2FDesalination-Plant-at-Bhgavnagar-
Mundra-in-Gujarat-on-
PPP.pdf&usg=AFQjCNG3DlS1L5wgdhBZ_Aj6Ci20iKZi1g
&sig2=UVOkvz-QQ9IMGp_lGMvDyg
[5]
http://environmentclearance.nic.in/writereaddata/FormB/TOR
/Brief_Summary/24_May_2016_1624419333HRHT81UProj
ectDescription-400.pdf
[6] http://www.gcc-sg.org/en-
us/CognitiveSources/DigitalLibrary/Lists/DigitalLibrary/Wat
er%20and%20Electricity/1414489603.pdf
Page 5
NHCE-17 Page 6