Desalinated Water Costs from Steam, Combined, and Nuclear Cogeneration Plants Using Power and Heat Allocation Methods

Obida Zeitoun (), Jamel Orfi, Salah Ud-Din Khan and Hany Al-Ansary
Additional contact information
Obida Zeitoun: Mechanical Engineering Department, King Saud University, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia
Jamel Orfi: Mechanical Engineering Department, King Saud University, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia
Salah Ud-Din Khan: K.A.CARE Energy Research and Innovation Center in Riyadh, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Hany Al-Ansary: Mechanical Engineering Department, King Saud University, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 6, 1-28

Abstract: This work presents a detailed thermo-economic analysis of unit water costs from dual-purpose cogeneration plants. The power levelized cost was first calculated for stand-alone steam, nuclear, and combined-cycle power plants. The cost of energy needed to operate the desalination systems connected to power plants was evaluated based on two different approaches: power- and heat-allocated methods. Numerical models based on the heat and mass balances of the power and desalination plants’ components were developed and validated. Comprehensive and updated data generated using Desaldata libraries were correlated to estimate the capital, labor, overhead, and maintenance costs for different desalination systems. The levelized water cost produced by multi-effect distillation, multi-effect distillation with vapor compression, multi-stage flash, and reverse osmosis systems connected to different power plants was estimated. The impact of various controlling parameters, including the price of natural gas, nuclear power plant installation cost, and the desalination capacity on water cost, was investigated. For all simulated cases, the levelized water cost evaluated using the heat-allocated method was found to be lower by 25–30% compared to that estimated using the power-allocated method. The cost of water produced using reverse osmosis remains below that produced by other desalination technologies. However, using the heat-allocated method to estimate the levelized water cost narrows the gap between the costs of water produced by multi-effect distillation and that produced by seawater reverse osmosis. The results also show that the use of the multi-effect distillation process in a cogeneration configuration rather than multi-effect distillation with vapor compression can result in a lower water cost. The profit analysis shows slight differences between the profit of a power plant connected to a reverse osmosis system and the profit of a power plant connected to a plain multi-effect distillation system.

Keywords: levelized cost of power; levelized cost of water cost; MED; MSF; RO; power cycles; nuclear power; cogeneration; allocation methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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