Involving integrated seawater desalination-power plants in the optimal design of water distribution networks

Ramón González-Bravo, Fabricio Nápoles-Rivera, José María Ponce-Ortega and Mahmoud M. El-Halwagi

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2015, vol. 104, issue PA, 181-193

Abstract: Water and energy consumption has increased substantially over the last decades. Water scarcity has led to an increase in the extraction of fresh water from aquifers, dams and lakes, and it has produced serious overexploitation problems. Furthermore, the population growth in urbanized areas and the increase in water and energy demands in industry, agriculture and households have amplified this problem. As consequence, there are several regions where is almost impossible to satisfy the water demands using the available water resources. In this context, the use of alternative water resources such as reclaimed water, rainwater harvesting and the potential use of desalinated water can be an option. However, desalinated seawater is very expensive because the high energy consumption, and this way to integrate a seawater desalination plant to a power plant to simultaneously produce clean water and power can be an attractive option. This way, this paper proposes an optimization formulation for synthesizing water networks to satisfy water and energy demands in a macroscopic system involving the use of existing water resources and the installation of integrated seawater desalination-power plants. A case study from Mexico (where satisfying the water demands has become a serious problem) is presented. Results show that the integrated system is able to satisfy the current water demands, the excess desalinated water can be used to recharge the overexploited aquifers and interesting profits can be obtained from the sales of power.

Keywords: Seawater desalination; Macroscopic water networks; Water scarcity; Optimization; Aquifer water recharge; Sustainable water management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344915300707
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:recore:v:104:y:2015:i:pa:p:181-193

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2015.08.010

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().