Global Clean Water Desalination Alliance and Nuclear Energy H2O -CO2

Leon Awerbuch,

Dean of IDA Desalination Academy, President International Desalination Consultancy Assoctiates LLC

IAEA Technical Meeting to Examine the Techno-Economics of and

Opportunities for Non-Electric Applications of Small and Medium Sized

or Modular Reactors

Vienna, Austria 29-30 May 2017

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Water and Environment

With dramatic interest in finding solutions to combat

climate change in view of the impacts of global warming

on water resources, Nuclear Desalination can offer

significant potential to substitute fossil fuel as a source of

energy for desalination.

Water demand is increasing worldwide as a result of

growing populations and rising standards of living. Further,

increasing climate variability is disrupting historical

patterns of precipitation and water storage. While

conservation and reuse efforts have helped to moderate

demand for new freshwater resources in some locations,

desalination technology is increasingly being used to meet

demand worldwide.

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Global cumulative installed contracted and

commissioned desalination capacity, 1965 – 2016

Source: GWI DesalData / IDA, 2016

The Latest Trend GWI Data

By Capex

The Global Clean Water Desalination Alliance – H20 minus CO2, initiated by

Masdar in collaboration with France and the International Desalination

Association, launches in Paris during COP21

With access to drinking water already a major challenge for as much as one quarter of

the world’s population, and further forecasts predicting that by 2030, 47% of the

global population will face water scarcity, The Global Clean Water Desalination

Alliance – H20 minus CO2 is one of the few climate initiatives dealing with the water-

energy nexus and climate change.

The Alliance’s goal is to seek solutions that will substantially reduce the projected

increase in CO2 emissions from the desalination process, as global demand for

drinking water continues to grow. The Alliance’s action plan could see a decrease in

emissions from 120 MTCO2 up to as much as 270MTCO2 per year by 2040.

The Global Clean Water Desalination Alliance – H20 minus CO2

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The action plan includes obtaining amplified commitment by all Alliance

members to use clean energy sources to power new desalination plants

and to retrofit existing plants, whenever possible. Further focus is on

improved energy efficiency of desalination processes, increased efforts on

R&D and demonstration projects, better dissemination of innovative

technologies, capacity building and analysis and formulation of adequate

policies and regulatory frameworks. The concept note of the Alliance

underlines that the initiative will ensure the sustainability of the entire

desalination process is taken into account beyond the sole issue of energy

sources.

We call on all to join the Alliance to bring the vision to reality

"IDA is proud to be a founding member of the Global Clean Water

Desalination Alliance. We have long been a champion of environmental

responsibility in desalination practices including lower energy consumption

and an increase in the use of renewable energy to power desalination,

resulting in the reduction of CO2 emissions. This has been a goal of IDA's

Energy and Environmental Task Forces, and we believe that the GCWDA

initiative will bring us ever-closer to realizing this objective,"

The Global Clean Water Desalination Alliance – H20 minus CO2

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The International Desalination Association held an Energy &

Environment Forum in Miami, Florida on December 7-8, 2016.

Attended by invited leaders of the global desalination and water reuse

community, the theme of the Forum was “Creative Solutions and Innovative

Strategies to Today’s Water Challenges.”

The Forum addressed three main goals: a) brokering knowledge of the best

available and most appropriate technologies and practices for energy

efficiency and environmental stewardship in desalination and water reuse; b)

raising awareness of the national importance of water as committed to during

the 2016 White House Water Summit; and c) identifying and prioritizing

solutions that reduce CO2 emissions and promote the use of renewable

energy in desalination and water reuse in accordance with the mission of the

Global Clean Water Desalination Alliance – H2O minus CO2.This IDA Blue

Paper report provides a summary of the Forum’s proceedings and includes

the presentations given and supplemental material submitted by the

participants. Its available to IDA members but some of the finding, I included

in this presentation. It will be presented in IDA World Congress in Sao Paulo,

Brazil October 15-20, 2017

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Process/energy type MED MED -TVC MSF RO

Specific heat consumption,

kJ/kg,

PR kg/2326 kJ/kg

178

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221-250

10.5-9.3

250-273 9.3-

8.5

Steam pressure, ata 0.35 - 0.4 2.5-3.5 2.5-3.5 _

Electric energy equivalent,

kWh/m3 3-4.5 5.4-8* 5.6-8.0 _

Electric consumption, kWh/m3 1.0--1.5 0.9-1.8 3.4-4.5 3.3-4.0

Total electric energy

equivalent, kWh/m3 4.0-5.0 6.3-9.8 9.0-12.5 3.3-4.0

Energy Requirements for Desalination

Courtesy of Leon Awebuch

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Top-down estimates place equivalent electric energy consumption of

current online capacity at about 200 TWhe/yr, or an average power

demand around 23 GWe, and preliminary

estimates show a direct carbon footprint of about 120 million metric tons

annually.

About 41% of this energy is consumed as electricity; the remainder is heat

used to drive thermal desalination plants, typically in the form of steam at

temperatures between 65 and 130°C depending upon the technologyiv.

With RO, about 2.1–3.6 kg CO2 are produced per m3 (1000 liters) of fresh

water, depending strongly on the fuel used to produce the electricity. The

less efficient thermal desalination technologies generally emit 8–20 kg

CO2/m3, with the exception of stand-alone MED at 3.4 kg CO2/m3.

Desalination Carbon Footprint

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Calculating GHG emissions (grams CO2-equivalents per cubic meter of fresh water)

associated with producing the energy to drive a modern large-scale 3.5

kWh/m3 seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant.

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During last year IAEA’s Technical Meeting on User/Vendor Interface

on Cogeneration for Electricity and Seawater Desalination using Nuclear Energy

14-16 March 2016 Vienna, Austria we arrived with consensus on the best option.

There was a consensus among participant at the meeting that the best

option for nuclear desalination is the use of straight MED technology

hybridized with RO. The MED unit size and efficiency in recent year’s

demonstrated full ability to reach unit size of 50,000 m3/day and in near

future up 91,000 m3/day. Today, the Gain Output Ratio is exceeding GOR=11

and in future will exceed GOR=15.

The electrical energy consumption is between .9 kWh/m3 to 1.3 kWh/m3.

The seawater Reverse Osmosis (RO) fully demonstrated its ability to reliably

produce desalinated water with low electrical energy consumption of 3.5

kWh/m3, during construction of nuclear plant, as well as more important

during nuclear refueling, during maintenance and non-availability of nuclear

steam. RO has been also proven for its use during nuclear emergency.

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The integrated hybrid MED-RO design can make use of warmer seawater

discharged from NPP or reject sections final condenser of MED to reduce

energy consumption, reduce size of seawater intake and outfall. To minimize

energy consumption and reduce power losses of NPP it is recommended to

use straight MED with the lowest extractions steam pressure available using

straight MED, rather than MED-TVC. To use steam from extraction section of

NPP turbine .15 MPa cannot be send directly to MED, because of high volume

of steam at lower pressure the piping would be too big with very large

diameter, making economically not practical. We proposed an indirect energy

transfer trough water transformer system. The power plant low pressure

extraction steam is initially exchanged in a separate smaller Condenser to a

closed cooling water circuit. The heat absorbed by the water is transferred by

pipeline to MED flashing chamber to provide steam for the first effect of MED at about 68.5 °C. The flashed water cooled to 68°C together with portion of the

vapor condensed in the first effect is pumped by return water pipeline to Condenser at the steam turbine proximity

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The significant benefits of preferred design of Nuclear Desalination

Elimination of the large steam piping from power plant to the evaporators, including

heat and steam loss.

Elimination of the MED steam transformer as there is no need for a thermocompressor.

The condensate is re-flashed deaerated and totally returns from first effect. No

hydrazine contamination of the product.

The heat can be transferred in water pipeline a long distance allowing NPP power and

water islands to be at optimum location.

We recognized that there is significant difference in construction time of NPP of at least

6 years versus desalination plant of 30 months, therefore it was recommended that the

Feasibility Study and Minimum Functional Specification (MFS) be prepared at the

beginning of the NPP project. The consideration has to be given to different life time

design for NPP sixty years and desalination of 20-30 years with rapid changing and

improving desalination technology.

In specifying NPP and desalination islands it is recommended that the standards for

desalination island both design and operations does not use nuclear design criteria but

more conventional established desalination practice, however the monitoring of safety,

radioactivity of air and water, quality of desalination products and brine needs to be

responsibility of nuclear developer.

IDA 2016 ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT FORUM

The size of MED units is growing rapidly. The largest MED plant in

the world is currently the Jubail Water and Power plant (JWAP) a

Marafiq plant built by SIDEM of France with 800,000 m3/d

production capacity from 27 MED units of 6.6 MIGD per train. This

is a dual purpose plant generating 2744 MW electricity in addition to

desalinated water.

The largest operational MED units are in Fujairah 2 with units of 8.5

MIGD capacity producing 455,000 m3/day (100 MIGD) also by

SIDEM. This also the largest MED-RO Hybrid with 30MIGD

A single unit of 15 MIGD was built for demonstration purposes in

Yanbu by Doosan with capacity of 15 MIGD and a unit of 20 MIGD

was offered by Sasakura of Japan and Sidem in KSA.

Multi-Effect Distillation Technology (MED)

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Veolia/Sidem is completing Az Zour North Phase 1 IWPP - 1500

MW +107 MIGD an EPC contract won in 2014 to build a

desalination plant in Kuwait with a daily production capacity of

486,400 cubic meters of water. The plant is MED-TVC with 10 x

10.84 MIGD units in total 107 MIGD. But most important is the

ability to lower the process power consumption to 0.9 kWh/m3

with GOR 11 meaning that 1 ton of steam generates 11 ton of

desalinated water.

Hyundai is responsible for the 1,500-MW power station. The

energy for the desal plant is provided by backpressure steam

from combine cycle power plant typically at 2.7 bars

Az Zour North Phase 1 IWPP - 1500 MW +107 MIGD MED

• The heat for the MED unit will be supplied from steam water transformer.

• The hot water will be sent to a flash chamber and will generate the required steam to the MED unit.

• From the flash chamber the colder water will be pumped back to the steam/water transformer.

• In order to improve the overall specific energy consumption a nanofiltration unit has been added to treat the feed water to the hot group.

• The NF unit will remove all the sulphates dissolved in the feed, allowing to operate the MED at a top brine temperature of 80°C without scaling problems.

NF-MED Coupling with NPP steam/water transformer

NPP with NF-MED steam at 92 C and 20 effects with GOR 16 using hot water transformer.

The challenge is coupling of nuclear energy to MED thermal desalination plants through hot water loop

Sketch: Nano-filtration as a pre-treatment for MED

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Application of integrated nuclear energy with hybrid desalination solutions offers great opportunity to be

effective and competitive desalination process offering at the same time significatnt reductions in

Carbon Dioxide footprint, it should become an important task for Global Clean Water Desalination

Alliance.

Conclusions