Influence of osmotic energy recovery/osmotic dilution on seawater desalination energy demand

Supplying fresh, potable water to an ever increasing world population is becoming a major challenge. One possibility is to produce fresh water from seawater by Reverse Osmosis (RO), a process that is very energy intensive. To reduce the energy demand of this process, osmotic dilution (OD)/osmotic energy recovery (OER) systems can be used as pre-treatment. Both Reverse Electrodialysis (RED) and Pressure Retarded Osmosis (PRO) and their non energy-producing counterparts short-circuited RED/ Forward Osmosis (scRED/FO) and assisted RED/FO (ARED/AFO) were modelled as OD/OER devices for RO, in a thermodynamic way. Different mixing ratios of impaired versus salt water (0.5, 1 and 2) were compared at a realistic RO recovery of 50%. A realistic approach for the RED/PRO-RO hybrid process was also modelled incorporating some major losses, to gain a more realistic insight into its possibilities. The thermodynamic modelling revealed that a significant reduction of the SEC is possible with all hybrid processes. The reduction in SEC is less for the non energy-producing systems, but these have the added advantage of requiring a lower membrane area to achieve a similar extent of seawater dilution. From preliminary results of the more realistic modelling, it seems that RED-RO scores better when losses are incorporated. Further thermodynamic and realistic modelling will focus on different RO recoveries, capital cost calculations based on membrane requirements and sensitivity analysis of the different parameters implemented