Techno-economic-environmental analysis of direct-contact membrane distillation systems integrated with low-grade heat sources: A multi-objective optimization approach

Jianwei Xu, Yingzong Liang, Xianglong Luo, Jianyong Chen, Zhi Yang and Ying Chen

Applied Energy, 2023, vol. 349, issue C, No S0306261923010048

Abstract: Membrane distillation (MD) is an emerging desalination technology powered by low-grade thermal energy. This paper presents the multi-objective optimal design of the membrane distillation desalination plant. The heat sources are supercritical CO2 (sCO2) Brayton cycle waste heat and geothermal energy. Multi-objective mixed-integer nonlinear programming models are developed to optimize the integrated systems' design and operating conditions based on economic and environmental metrics. The models consider the simultaneous optimization of water production costs (wpc) and environmental impacts (wpei). The environmental performance is quantified through a life cycle assessment using the widely used ReCiPe 2016 method, enabling the identification of the main environmental hotspots throughout the plant's life cycle. Our methodology demonstrates the sustainability of MD desalination plants through various case studies. The results indicate that an appropriate MD system design can significantly reduce the environmental burden with a slight increase in cost. For the sCO2-MD scenario, a cost-effective design can achieve a minimum wpc of 0.758 $/m3 and a minimum wpei of 0.172 Pt/m3 in an environmentally friendly design. A balanced design can reduce the environmental impact by 31.30% with a slight cost increase of 4.48% compared to a cost-effective design. The minimum wpc and minimum wpei for the geothermal MD (GTMD) scenario are 412.27% and 215.94% higher, respectively, compared to the sCO2-MD scenario. Moreover, reducing the wpei of the GTMD system is also more expensive, requiring a 10.67% increase in cost to reduce the environmental impact by 21.65%.

Keywords: Membrane distillation; Multi-objective optimization; Economic-environmental evaluation; Water-energy nexus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261923010048
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:appene:v:349:y:2023:i:c:s0306261923010048

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.121640

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().