Cogeneration with the LT-MED desalination process

The low temperature distillation plants based on IDE's recent technological developments offer attractively low operating costs which compete with those of similar and alternative technologies. The operating cost of producing desalinated seawater on a large scale installation with different multi-effect distillation (MED) coupling arrangement in comparison with two leading technologies, namely SWRO and MSF, is shown. An additional advantage can be derived from the high purity of the produced water, allowing the water to be used directly for industrial process (boiler feed water) or to be blended with locally available brackish water. The experience accumulated with the commercial plants in three decades of experience and of more than 300 world-wide installations, shows that such plants have superior technological characteristics in comparison with other systems for seawater applications. These characteristics, resulting from the low temperature design, provide long term operation under remarkable stable conditions. Scale formation and corrosion are minimal or absent and these factors lead to exceptional high plant availabilities of 94% to 96%. All this reflects in the economics of these plants which are shown to have lower production costs and overall economics than other seawater desalination processes.