Optimization of Desalination Process

Desalination is the process to separate the salts and minerals from seawater to produce fresh water. This research project presents an optimization study of a single stage flash chamber based on the operating and design criteria of multistage flash (MSF) desalination process. The optimization study is essential to develop an efficient MSF process especially in the energy consumption of the process. The optimization problem is to optimize the total annualized cost of the single stage flash chamber, which includes the operating and capital costs while meeting the constraints based on the mass and energy balances, requirements and design equations. A non-linear programming (NLP) optimization model has been developed by using GAMS to solve the optimization problem by implementing the objective function and constraints. The optimal operating parameters, capital cost factors, operating and capital costs, as well as the total annualized cost (TAC) obtained from the optimization model is analyzed. Lastly, it has been found that the major contribution to the TAC is the energy cost. Thus, the future optimization study on MSF process should focus on the optimization of energy consumption.