Innovative Fresh Water Production Process for Fossil Fuel Plants
This project concerns a diffusion driven desalination (DDD) process where warm water is evaporated into a low humidity air stream, and the vapor is condensed out to produce distilled water. Although the process has a low fresh water to feed water conversion efficiency, it has been demonstrated that this process can potentially produce low cost distilled water when driven by low grade waste heat. This report describes the annual progress made in the development and analysis of a Diffusion Driven Desalination (DDD) system. A dynamic analysis of heat and mass transfer demonstrates that the DDD process can yield a fresh water production of 1.03 million gallon/day by utilizing waste heat from a 100 MW steam power plant based on a condensing steam pressure of only 3 Hg. The optimum operating condition for the DDD process with a high temperature of 50 C and sink temperature of 25 C has an air mass flux of 1.5 kg/m{sup 2}-s, air to feed water mass flow ratio of 1 in the diffusion tower, and a fresh water to air mass flow ratio of 2 in the condenser. Operating at these conditions yields a fresh water production efficiency (m{sub fW}/m{sub L}) of 0.031 and electric energy consumption rate of 0.0023 kW-hr/kg{sub fW}. Throughout the past year, the main focus of the desalination process has been on the direct contact condenser. Detailed heat and mass transfer analyses required to size and analyze these heat and mass transfer devices are described. The analyses agree quite well with the current data. Recently, it has been recognized that the fresh water production efficiency can be significantly enhanced with air heating. This type of configuration is well suited for power plants utilizing air-cooled condensers. The experimental DDD facility has been modified with an air heating section, and temperature and humidity data have been collected over a range of flow and thermal conditions. It has been experimentally observed that the fresh water production rate is enhanced when air is heated prior to entering the diffusion tower. Further analytical analysis is required to predict the thermal and mass transport with the air heating configuration.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG26-02NT41537
- OSTI ID:
- 862097
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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INNOVATIVE FRESH WATER PRODUCTION PROCESS FOR FOSSIL FUEL PLANTS
INNOVATIVE FRESH WATER PRODUCTION PROCESS FOR FOSSIL FUEL PLANTS