An optimal thermal
seawater desalination process is disclosed, which combines two or more substantially different water pretreatment processes in a unique manner and in a special configuration, hereto unknown to prior
desalination arts, to produce a high yield of high quality
fresh water, including
potable water. In this process a two stage NF membrane pretreatment unit (NF2) with an
energy recovery turbo charger (TC) device in between the stages or equipped with an
energy recovery pressure exchanger (PX) is synergistically combined with at least one thermal
desalination unit to form a dual
hybrid of NF2-Thermal (FIG. 4 ), or alternatively the two stage NF2 unit is synergistically combined with a two stage SWRO unit (SWRO2) with an
energy recovery TC in between the stages or combined with
one stage SWRO (SWRO1) equipped with an energy
recovery TC or PX
system and the reject from the SWRO2 or SWRO1 unit is made make-up to a thermal unit to form a tri-
hybrid of NF2-SWRO2 reject-Thermal (FIG. 5 ). In both the cases of di- or trihybrids the thermal unit is equivalent to a multistage flash
distillation (MSFD) or multieffect
distillation (MED) or vapor compression
distillation (VCD) or thermal reheat (RH)
evaporator. Typically a process of this invention using the two stage NF2 initial pretreatment step will perform a semi-desalination step by reducing feed TDS by about 35 to 50%, but most important, especially to the thermal
seawater desalination process, it removes the
water recovery limiting, scale forming
hardness ions of Ca++ and Mg++ by better than 80% and their covalent anions of
sulfate to better than 95% and
bicarbonate to about 65%. The removal of scale forming
hardness ions, especially SO4=, and bicarbonates allowed for the operation of thermal unit in the above hybrids at top brine temperature (TBT) much greater than its present TBT limit by the singular conventional process of 120° C. for MSFD and operation of MED or VCD or RH unit at TBT much higher than their present TBT limit of 65-70° C., with many advantages gained by this process over prior art sweater desalination processes. The process of this invention exceeds all prior thermal
seawater desalination arts in efficiency, including water yield, product
water recovery ratio and unit
water cost as well as in
energy consumption per unit product which is equivalent or less than other efficient prior art seawater thermal desalination processes. By this process, an NF
product recovery ratio of 75 and 80% or better is achieved from the high
salinity Gulf sea (TDS≈45,000 ppm) and about an equal
product recovery ratio is also obtained from the SWRO or thermal unit when it is operated on NF product for a total
water recovery ratio in excess of 52% for seawater