Performance Analysis of a RED-MED Salinity Gradient Heat Engine
A performance analysis of a salinity gradient heat engine (SGP-HE) is presented for the conversion of low temperature heat into power via a closed-loop Reverse Electrodialysis (RED) coupled with Multi-Effect Distillation (MED). Mathematical models for the RED and MED systems have been purposely developed in order to investigate the performance of both processes and have been then coupled to analyze the efficiency of the overall integrated system. The influence of the main operating conditions (i.e., solutions concentration and velocity) has been quantified, looking at the power density and conversion efficiency of the RED unit, MED Specific Thermal Consumption (STC) and at the overall syste…
Correlations for estimating the specific capital cost of multi-effect distillation plants considering the main design trends and operating conditions
Abstract This work proposes a correlation for the specific capital cost of multi-effect distillation (MED) plants, considering their main design options and parameters, such as the number of effects, size/capacity, and heat source temperature. These parameters are varied within a large range to cover as many different cases as possible. The cost correlation decouples the evaporator cost and includes in the expression the ratio of the heat exchanger area to a reference one. This area is calculated using a validated MED numerical model, with the results then processed to produce fitted expressions. Two versions of this correlation with different levels of complexity are proposed, which provid…