Proceedings of the ASME 2011 International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition

IMECE2011
November 11-17, 2011, Denver, Colorado, USA

IMECE2011-62655

Proceedings of IMECE2011

2011 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition

November 11-17, 2011, Denver, Colorado USA

IMECE 2011: 62655

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF A VACUUM DESALINATION SYSTEM

M. Saad M. Ahmed
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Assiut University, Assiut 71516, Assiut University, Assiut 71516,
Egypt Egypt
[email protected] [email protected]
V. M. Morcos
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Assiut University, Assiut 71516,
Egypt
[email protected]

INTRODUCTION
ABSTRACT Fresh water is a basic natural resource and plays a very
A new desalination system has been proposed and designed important role in the overall development of economy of any
for converting sea water into fresh water utilizing the waste country. Due to ever-increasing population and
heat of internal combustion engines. The desalination process industrialization, natural supply of fresh water is not enough
is based on the evaporation of sea water under a very low for all uses. In order to overcome this problem, desalination of
pressure (vacuum). The low pressure is achieved by using the seawater or brackish water is generally performed by either of
suction side of a compressor rather than a commonly used two main processes. The first one is carried out using a semi-
vacuum pump. The evaporated water is then condensed to permeable membrane to separate fresh water from a
obtain fresh water. The effects of operational variables such as concentrate. The other one is conducted by using evaporation
evaporator temperature, condenser temperature, vacuum technology. In case of using the membrane, electricity is
pressure, and flow rate of both evaporator and condenser on the utilized in order to drive high pressure pumps or to generate
yield of fresh water are experimentally investigated. It is found electric fields to separate the ions [1]. When evaporation or
that decreasing the vacuum pressure causes a significant thermal processes are used, the distillation of seawater is
increase in the yield of fresh water. It is also found that achieved by using a heat source. Such kind of heat sources
decreasing the condenser temperature, or increasing the may be obtained from a conventional waste heat, nuclear
evaporator temperature both lead to an increase in the yield of energy or from non-conventional sources like solar energy,
fresh water. Moreover, increasing the condenser flow rate tends geothermal energy or ocean thermal gradient energy [1].
to increase the yield of fresh water. The same trend is attained The most important methods of commercial desalination
by increasing the evaporator flow rate. using membrane technology include reverse osmosis (RO) and
electrodialysis (ED). In the RO method, a pump is required to
increase the pressure of the feed water to the desired value.
The required pressure depends on the salt concentration of the

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 feed, and in most cases the pumps are electrically driven [2]. capillary tube to the flash chamber. The expanded seawater in
The osmotic pressure is overcome by applying external the flash chamber undergoes a phase change due to the flashing
pressure higher than the osmotic pressure on the seawater. process, and subsequently absorbing sensible heat. The water
Thus, water flows in the reverse direction to the natural flow vapor coming from the lower part of chamber is condensed in
across the membrane, leaving the dissolved salts behind with an the condenser by giving out a heat to the cold water pumped
increase in salt concentration [2]. No heating or phase relation through it. The obtained water is pumped out periodically by a
change is necessary in RO method. The major energy required condensate pump [9].
for desalinating is for pressurizing the seawater feed. Typical A small unit for water desalination by solar energy based on
large seawater RO plant consists of four major components: a flash evaporation process is reported in [10]. The system
feed water pre-treatment, high pressure pumping, membrane consists of a solar water heater (flat plate solar collector)
separation, and permeate post-treatment. Furthermore, the ED working as a brine heater and a vertical flash unit that is
process requires electricity to produce migration of ions attached with a condenser/ preheat unit.
through suitable ion-exchange membranes. Both RO and ED In the present work, a new desalination system has been
methods are useful for brackish water desalination; however, designed utilizing the waste heat of internal combustion
RO is also competitive with multi-stage flash distillation engines. The desalination process is based on evaporation of
processes for large-scale seawater desalination [2]. sea water under a very low pressure. The required vacuum
The other most important commercial desalination methods pressure for evaporation of seawater can be reached without
using evaporation technology are multiple effect distillation using expensive vacuum pumps. In addition, a very low
(MED), vapor compression distillation (VCD) and multi-stage pressure down to absolute zero can be reached. The effects of
flash (MSF) distillation. The MED process takes place in a evaporator temperature, condenser temperature, vacuum
series of evaporator stages and uses the principle of reducing pressure, and the flow rate of both evaporator and condenser on
the ambient pressure and temperature. This process allows the the yield of fresh water are investigated. In the next section the
seawater feed to undergo boiling without supplying additional experimental setup is explained in detail.
heat after the first stage. In vapor compression (VCD) [3], the
compression may be achieved by applying thermal energy or EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND PROCEDURES
mechanical energy. In both thermal and mechanical systems, A schematic diagram of the developed desalination system
after vapor is generated from the saline solution, it is is presented in Fig. 1. The system consists of a hot water pump,
compressed and then condensed to obtain potable water. condenser, evaporator, cold water pump, collection tank for
The MSF process is based on the principle of flash condensed water, and compressor. The evaporator and
evaporation in which a sudden pressure reduction occurs and condenser are constructed inside a chamber. These main
results in seawater evaporation. It consists of many serial stages components are described as follows:
at successively decreasing temperatures and pressures [4-5].
This desalination method has been investigated by many
researchers as reported in [6]. A low-temperature phase-change
desalination process configuration is presented in [7]. The
suggested configuration allows saline water to be evaporated at
near-ambient temperatures under vacuum pressures created by
the barometric head without any mechanical energy input.
Results of this study show that a fresh water production rate of
6 L/d can be maintained at evaporation temperatures as low as
40° C.
Utilization of waste heat from power plants for production
of fresh water through a vacuum desalination process was
reported in [8]. As reported, the vacuum pressure is created by
using a jet pump. By decreasing the saturation pressure exerted
on the seawater to about 5.622 kPa, a condenser outlet
temperature could be used as an external heat source for boiling
the seawater, and the condenser inlet temperature could be used
for condensing vapor.
The utilization of an ocean thermal gradient for production Fig. 1: Schematic diagram of desalination system.
of fresh water through a vacuum desalination process is
reported in [9]. The warm water pump pressurizes the warm Compressor: the power of the compressor necessary for
seawater available at the atmospheric conditions and supplies it producing the required vacuum pressure in the desalination
to the jet pump which is used to create a vacuum pressure. The system is 0.25 kW. The suction side of the compressor
pressurized water, then, passes through the evaporator to give connected to fresh water collection tank. When the compressor
out a sensible heat. Some portions of water expand through is switched on, a vacuum pressure is created and utilized to

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 withdraw the condensate water from the chamber to the fresh typical conditions is obtained using an electric water heater as a
water collection tank. When the vacuum is created in fresh replacement for hot water coming from engine. The cold water
water collection tank, the pressure is lower than that in temperature in condenser ranges between 20 and 28 °C. The
chamber. So when the valve between chamber and fresh water hot water temperature in the evaporator is in the range of 65 to
collection tank is open, the condensed water flows from the 84 °C. The chamber pressure was varied between 12 and 40
chamber to the fresh water collection tank. This valve closes kPa. To study the effect of operational parameters, one of the
before the vapor enters the collection tank to prevent damage to parameters is varied while other parameters are kept constant
the compressor. at prescribed specific values. In the following section, the
Evaporator: the seawater evaporates at the lower part of the results and discussions are presented.
chamber and undergoes phase change by absorbing heat from
the water flowing through the evaporator. The seawater will be RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
compensated by using a level controller. The evaporator is The variations of chamber temperature and pressure
connected directly to the sea water and is constructed of copper corresponding to the evaporation of seawater versus the inlet
tubes with tube length and diameter of 4 m and 0.006 m hot water (evaporator) temperature are presented in Fig. 2.
respectively. Based on the Figure, as hot water temperature increases, both
Condenser: the water vapor is condensed by giving out its the corresponding chamber pressure and temperature required
latent heat to the cold water flowing through the condenser and for evaporation increase. This occurs since the temperature and
is collected around the condenser tubes. This condensed water pressure are dependent properties during phase-change
will be withdrawn to the fresh water collection tank. The processes and there is one-to-one correspondence between
condenser is constructed of copper tubes with tube length and temperatures and pressures.
diameter of 4 m, and 0.006 m respectively. To increases the
heat transfer surface area of condenser, the copper tubes are
equipped with aluminum fins.
Chamber: the chamber encloses primarily the condenser
and the evaporator, where the seawater is evaporated, and then
condensate to produce fresh water. The overall dimensions of
the chamber are 0.6 x 0.6 x 0.6 m. The chamber is divided into
two main parts using an angle plate. The evaporator is placed
on the left bottom side, while the condenser is placed on the
right top side of the chamber. The chamber is insulated to
avoid heat loss. In the chamber, the seawater is evaporated,
and then condensed to produce fresh water.
Hot water from engine is delivered to the evaporator in
order to give out sensible heat to seawater. The compressor is
connected to the condensed water collection tank. When the
compressor is turned on, vacuum pressure is created in both the
collection tank and the chamber at the same time. Once, the
required vacuum pressure is reached, the compressor is turned
off. As a matter of fact, the vacuum pressure causes a reduction
in the corresponding boiling temperature. Consequently, the
seawater evaporates at low temperature. The water vapor
coming from the lower part of the chamber is condensed
around the condenser tubes allowing heat transfer to the Fig. 2: Variation of chamber temperature (TCh), chamber
condenser cold water. The condensed water is periodically pressure (PCh) versus evaporator temperature (TEv).
collected in the collection tank by operating the compressor and
opening the valve between the chamber and the collection tank. Figure 3 shows the effect of chamber pressure on fresh
The seawater in the evaporator is compensated by using a water yield when the condenser and evaporator flow rates are
level controller. When seawater level decreases, the controller 4.5 Lpm, and 6.5 Lpm respectively. The condenser temperature
opens the valve and seawater is injected in chamber under is equal to 28 °C, and the evaporator temperature is set to be
atmospheric pressure; hence no pumping power is required. about 84 °C. It is found that as the chamber pressure increases,
This makes the proposed system a continuous process type. The fresh water yield decreases. The reason is that an increase in
concentrated seawater available at the bottom of the chamber is chamber pressure increases boiling point of the seawater.
periodically removed. Thereby the evaporation rate decreases, resulting in the
The components of the desalination system as shown in Fig. decrease of fresh water yield.
1 are integrated and tested for pressure drop and heat loss.
Evaporator flow rate required for conducting an experiment at

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 Fig. 4: Effect of evaporator temperature on yield
Fig. 3: Effect of chamber pressure on yield.

Figure 4 shows the effect of variation of evaporator

temperature on fresh water yield while the condenser and
evaporator flow rates are set at 4.5 Lpm, and 6.5 Lpm
respectively. Based on results, when evaporator temperature
increases, fresh water yield increases. This is attributed to an
increase of the heat input to the system due to the increase of
the evaporator temperature. This will lead to a significant
increase in the rate of vapor generation, and consequently
increases fresh water yield.
Figure 5 shows the effect of varying condenser temperature
on the fresh water yield while the condenser and evaporator
flow rates are set to be 4.5 Lpm, and 6.5 Lpm respectively. It is
obvious from figure that increasing the condenser temperature
results in a significant decrease of fresh water yield. This is due
to the reduction in heat removal rate from the condenser as a
result of an increasing of condensing temperature.
Figure 6 shows the variation of evaporator flow rate versus
fresh water yield at a condenser flow rate of 4.5 Lpm and
temperature of 25 °C, evaporator temperature 77 °C, and
chamber pressure 20 kPa. Results indicate that by increasing
evaporator water flow rate, fresh water yield increases. The Fig. 5: Effect of condenser temperature on yield
reason is that when evaporator flow rate increases, heat transfer
from evaporator to seawater is increased. This causes an
increase of the evaporation rate, resulting in an increase of fresh
water yield.

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 CONCLUSION 
A vacuum desalination system utilizing engine waste heat
has been designed and experimentally investigated. The main
advantage of the current suggested system is that the expensive
vacuum pump is not required. In addition, a very low pressure
up to absolute zero can be reached. Experimental results
indicate that decreasing the vacuum pressure causes a
significant increase in the yield of fresh water. It is also found
that decreasing the condenser temperature, or increasing the
evaporator temperature both lead to an increase in the yield of
fresh water. Moreover, increasing the condenser flow rate tends
to a significant increase of the yield of fresh water. The same
trend is observed by increasing the evaporator flow rate.

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[2] H. Strathmann, Ion-exchange membrane separation
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Fig. 7: Effect of cold water flow rate on yield

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