Journal of Membrane Science 282 (2006) 713

Optimum design of reverse osmosis seawater desalination system considering membrane cleaning and replacing
Yan-yue Lu a , Yang-dong Hu a, , Dong-mei Xu b , Lian-ying Wu a
College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Key Laboratory of Marine Chemistry Theory and Technology, Ministry of Education, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China b College of Chemistry and Environmental Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266003, China Received 18 November 2005; received in revised form 6 April 2006; accepted 17 April 2006 Available online 27 April 2006
a

Abstract The seawater reverse osmosis (RO) desalination is an attractive and viable method for the production of fresh water in many areas. This paper addresses the optimal design of RO desalination system considering membrane cleaning and replacing during the 5-year maintenance period, and only a single stage conguration with pressure exchanger is analyzed. A mathematical model for the prediction of the performance of RO process is presented in detail. Simultaneously, this paper also addresses the new fouling model and the criterion of cleaning and replacing. Then the relevant economic models to the RO desalination process are developed, which relate the cost of investment and operation with the design variables, the structural variable, as well as the binary variable that determine the membrane regeneration. The optimum design problem can be formulated as a mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem, which minimizes the total annualized cost. The mathematical programming problem is solved with GAMS software. As a result, the optimal operational parameters and the optimal cleaning and replacing scheduling are given. According to this model, one example is solved to illustrate the advantage and effectiveness of the suggested method. 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Keywords: Reverse osmosis; Seawater desalination; Optimum design; Membrane fouling; Cleaning and replacing scheduling

1. Introduction In the last few years, the seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination has gained much popularity, which will become the important method to solve the problem of fresh water lack. The technology of RO process has gone through a remarkable transformation. The new high rejection and high ow membranes were permitted operating at high pressures (up to 8090 bar), and thus making conversions to 5560% economically feasible. A higher efcient energy recovery device, pressure exchangers (PX), that in the past was only used in small RO seawater plant, is also slowly gaining acceptance in large desalination plants. Hydraulic efciency of this type of equipment is in the range of 9094%. All these advances have simplied the RO processing from a two-stage treatment shift to a single-stage array, and have resulted in lowering RO system capital and operating costs [16].

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 053282032141. E-mail address: ydhuhd@ouc.edu.cn (Y.-d. Hu).

Designing a cost effective RO desalination system is still a complex work, which relate to many variables, such as feed ow rate, operating pressures, recovery rate, the number of modules, and in the meantime have to identify the RO system conguration. In addition, fouling and scaling are major factors affecting the RO system performance. It will lead to rapid increase of operating pressure and decrease of membrane permeability, and the subsequent need to clean or replace fouled modules, as a result, the operating cost increase sharply. So it is signicantly important from the operational and design point of view to have a systematic method to calculate the optimal cleaning and replacing schedule for a RO process [7,8]. Considerable efforts for the development of new design methods of industrial plants have been made [911]. Based on the state-space approach, El-Halwagi [12] developed an integrated method to yield an optimal set of values of all operational and structural variables in the RO system design problem. The problem may be formulated either as an MINLP (mixed-integer nonlinear programming) or, a signicantly easier to tackle, NLP (nonlinear programming) problem. Voros and Maroulis [13,14]

0376-7388/$ see front matter 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.memsci.2006.04.019

Y.-y. Lu et al. / Journal of Membrane Science 282 (2006) 713

and Zhu and El-Halwagi [15] proposed unied methodologies incorporating sophisticated mathematical programming techniques to tackle the RO network synthesis problem. They have considered the effect of various feed conditions and membrane fouling respectively. See et al. [16] used a systematic method to calculate the optimal cleaning schedule for a given RO network. Malek and Hawlader [17] provided the realistic economic model which relates the various operational and capital cost elements to the design variable values. In the study, following the research efforts mentioned above, a new fouling model which can appropriately describe membrane modules performance and the criterion of modules cleaning and replacing are given. A systematic scheduling analysis based on a discrete time interval approach during a long maintenance periods of 5-years has been used to determine the optimal operating costs. Under specic conditions of temperature, feed solute concentration, the work has analyzed the optimization design problem of a single stage conguration with pressure exchanger type energy recovery device. The conguration is normally employed in the present RO desalination plant. 2. RO unit model Several researches have been directed towards modeling RO membrane module. A mass transfer solutiondiffusion model has been extensively proposed in many Refs. [1215]. The model is mainly based on two parameters: the water permeability, A, and the solute transport parameter, B. According to the model, the permeate ow rate, Qp (m3 h1 ), and the concentration, Cp ( L L1 ), are predicted as follows: Qp = 3.6 106 AS( P Cp = = B(Co Cp ) A( P ) 0.2641C (T + 273) 1.0 106 C Pf + Pb Pp 2 Cf + Cb 2 ) (1) (2) (3)

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of a membrane module.

where S (m2 ) is the module surface area, P (MPa) is the difference of trans-membrane pressure, (MPa) is the difference of trans-membrane osmotic pressure, Co and Cp denote feed average concentration and permeate concentration, respectively. Fig. 1 indicates a schematic representation of a membrane unit and the variables. The corresponding material balance relationships for membrane unit are given by Qf = Qb + Qp Qf Cf = Qb Cb + Qp Cp (6) (7)

The average feed ow rate per module (Qf ) is limited for avoiding concentration polarization and excessive pressure drop. The pressure drop in the ow across each membrane unit is assumed to be constant. All these are usually specied by membrane manufactures. Qfmin Qf Qfmax P b = P f P 3. RO module fouling model It is a common occurrence that membrane performance deteriorates with operating time. Both membrane permeability and salt rejection may decline at a certain rate. So it is necessary to determine the optimum maintenance schedule at the design stage, then the RO modules can be cleaning or replacing in time to satisfy the performance. The scheduling problem is constructed by partitioning the total time horizon, t, into n intervals of equal duration T. As shown in Fig. 2, t1 , t2 , . . ., indicate the rst interval or the second interval, etc. The operating day parameter, T, is analyzed at each subinterval q. q = x or y, where x and y denote the start (8) (9)

P= Co =

(4) (5)

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the scheduling.

Y.-y. Lu et al. / Journal of Membrane Science 282 (2006) 713

Fig. 3. Membrane performance deteriorates with operating time.

and the end of each period, respectively [16]. T1 represents the length of time since the last cleaning action was performed. T2 represents the length of time since the last replacing action was performed. Cleaning or replacing is only allowed at the start of each period and is described by decision variables, Z and K, respectively. Z takes the value of 0 if no cleaning is required and 1 when cleaning is necessary. In the same way, K takes the value of 1 when replacing is necessary, otherwise, it takes 0. It is assumed that no downtime is incurred for membrane regeneration as the time involved (a few hours) is negligible compared to the length of each interval. We set the interval as 2 months. The operating day T can be calculated as follow: T1,n,x = (1 Zn )T1,n1,y T1,n,y = T1,n,x + T (10) (11) (12) (13) (14)

Many studies on membrane fouling model have been reported [15,16]. See et al. [16] assumed an exponential decay in water permeability (A) over time. In this study, a more appropriate fouling model that consider incomplete cleaning and module replacement are given as follow: An,q = A0 (1 1 T2,n,q ) exp Bn,q = B0 (1 + 2 T2,n,q ) exp T1,n,q 1 (15) (16)

T1,n,q 2

T2,n,x = (1 kn )T2,n1,y T2,n,y = T2,n,x + Zn kn T

where A0 and B0 denote initial water permeability and solute transport parameter respectively, which are specied by membrane manufactures. 1 , 2 are the constants that denote the membrane degraded extent. 1 , 2 are membrane performance decay constants. They are determined by experiment. Fig. 3 indicates the change of parameters An,q and Bn,q . The criterion of modules cleaning and replacing are given as follow: An,q A0 C1 Bn,q B0 (1 + C2 ) (17) (18)

When the membrane module performance deteriorates with operating time, it can be restored with effective cleaning. However, after prolonged exposure to fouling conditions, performance restoration through membrane cleaning is less than effectively, and the limits of system performance (feed pressure and permeate quality) are exceeded. Then, replacing old membranes with new elements is the only means to restore system performance.

where C1 is water permeability decrease rate, C2 is solute transport parameter increase rate. 4. System model In the current work, a single stage conguration with pressure exchanger type energy recovery device was adopted. Fig. 4 shows the RO process ow diagram.

Fig. 4. The RO process ow diagram.

10

Y.-y. Lu et al. / Journal of Membrane Science 282 (2006) 713

The desalination section can be separated into several independent RO trains with respective high pressure feed pumps and energy recovery devices. First, an excessive number of trains, U, is introduced as an initial guess. Then at the optimum certain binary variables are either set to zero or to one that indicates the absence or presence of the specic train. Finally, an optimal value of trains is given. The corresponding material balance relationships for RO process are presented as follow:
U

than three times the module number of the minimum size train (Nmin ). Qpmin refers to the minimum desirable product ow rate, Cpmax refers to the maximum allowable product concentration. 5. Solution methodology The optimization design problem is formulated as a mixedinteger nonlinear programming (MINLP) model for minimizing the total annualized cost subject to thermodynamic, technical, fouling, and exibility constraints. The total annualized cost (TAC) of the system consists of two terms: annual operating cost (OC) and annualized capital cost (CC). The annual operating cost includes the energy cost (E) necessary for pumps, the cost of membrane module cleaning and replacing (OCc and OCr ). The annualized capital cost is for the initial membrane module, pumps and pressure exchanger. The objective function is presented as follow:
U

Qf = n,q Qp = n,q Qb n,q =

u=1 U u=1 U u=1 U

Qf u,n,q Qp u,n,q Qb u,n,q

(19)

(20)

(21)

p Cn,q =

p p Qu,n,q Cu,n,q p Qn,q u=1

TAC = (22) (23)

U p Qp Cu,n,q u,n,q

Cm
u=1

Nu + CCin + CCHpp + CCpx + CCbp

1.411 0.08 + (OCin + OCHpp + OCbp )Co + OCc Co + OCr Co CCpx = 3134.7Q0.58 px OCHpp =
U

Qf n,q

Qp n,q

+ Qb n,q
U b Qb Cu,n,q + u,n,q

(35)

f Qf Cn,q = n,q

(24) (25) (26)

u=1

u=1

(36) (37)

Qf = Qf,1 + Qf,2 n,q n,q n,q Qf,2 u,n,q U = =

U

Qb u,n,q Ru

QPCe Hpp motor

n

OCc = (27) Qf u,n,q Nu Qb u,n,q Nu OCr = (28)

u=1 n=1 u=1 n=1 U n

((Zu,n Ku,n )Nu 200 + Zu,n 200)

(38)

u=1

Ru Qfmin Ru Qomin

Qfmax Ru Qomax Ru

Ku,n Nu 800

(39)

(29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34)

Nmax = max(Nu Ru |u = 1, 2, . . . , U) Nmin = min(Nu Ru |u = 1, 2, . . . , U) Nmax 3Nmin Qp n,q Qpmin

p Cn,q Cpmax

where U* is the optimal value of trains. Ru is binary variable that indicates the absence or presence of the specic train. Nu is the number of modules in the u train. Qomin , Qomax refer to the brine minimum outlet ow rate and the maximum outlet ow rate, respectively. In order to guarantee much more against excessive local polarization, a minimum brine outlet ow rate should be xed. The module number of train is a variable. In order to avoid the train sizes differentiate excessively, it is necessary that the module number of the maximum size train (Nmax ) should be less

where Cm denotes the membrane module cost that is specied to be $1000 per module, it involves the cost of pressure vessel. 1.411 is the coefcient that used to calculate the practical investment. 0.08 is the capital charge rate. CCin , CCHpp , CCbp , CCpx is the capital cost of the seawater intake pump, the highpressure pump, the booster pump and the pressure exchanger, respectively. OCin , OCHpp , OCbp is the energy cost necessary for these pumps. Their functions refer to the paper [11,15,17]. The PX cost function provide a convenient estimate at various ow rates, which obtained by regression of the cost data provided by the Energy Recovery, Inc. [18] The function is given by Eq. (32). The cleaning cost, OCc , involves a variable cost of $200 per module cleaned, and a xed cost of $200 for downtime in which cleaning or replacing occurs. It is specied that the membrane replacing cost is $800 per module. Co is the operating cost charge rate during the maintenance periods. The MINLP can be solved using the software GAMS. It solves the problem by decomposing it into a series of nonlinear (NLP) sub-problems and mixed integer (MIP) master problems. Several starting points are used to obtain the best possible solution.

Y.-y. Lu et al. / Journal of Membrane Science 282 (2006) 713 Table 1 Input data for the design Feed concentration, L L1 Feed water temperature, C Minimum owrate per module, m3 h1 Maximum owrate per module, m3 h1 Pressure drop per module, MPa Initial water permeability, kg s1 N1 Initial solute transport parameter, kg s1 m2 Module operating pressure bounds, MPa Membrane area per module, m2 34800 25 1 2 0.2 3.0 1010 4.0 106 5.09.2 152 Table 2 The parameters for calculation High pressure pump efciency, Hpp Pressure exchanger efciency, px Electric motor efciency, motor Coefcients of Eq. (15), 1 , 1 Coefcients of Eq. (16), 2 , 2 Parameter of Eq. (17), C1 Parameter of Eq. (18), C2 Parameter of Eq. (30), Co The cost of electricity, Ce , $(kwh)1

11

75% 90% 98% 1 = 1.67 104 , 1 = 328 2 = 1.67 104 , 2 = 650 40% 60% 20% 0.08

6. Case study This example deals with the desalination of seawater using DuPont B-10 hollow-ber RO modules, which specied a lifetime of 5 years. In this case, the minimum acceptable permeate ow rate is 80 m3 h1 , the maximum allowable permeate concentration is 500 L L1 . The properties of the membrane module and the data of membrane performance deteriorates with time are taken from Ref. [15]. Table 1 presents the input data for the design. The parameters for calculation, which are given based on Refs. [15,17], are listed in Table 2. The calculations were conducted for a single stage conguration with pressure exchanger RO system. The maximum number of trains, U, is set as 3. In order to show the difference clearly, the mathematical programming problems of the systems consisting

of one train, two trains and three trains are calculated, respectively. The process ow diagram shows in Fig. 4. A maintenance period of 5-years is specied. Table 3 shows the result of the RO system design. The optimum maintenance schedule of the RO system during the operating period of 5-years is shown in Fig. 5, where the black thick line denotes that the modules are cleaned and the double black line denotes that the modules are replaced at that time. The resulting design, as shown in Table 3, indicates that the system consisting of three trains has the lowest total annualized cost among three instances, so the optimal value is 3. But the results obtained are very sensitive to the cost and fouling models employed in the simulation. If the xed cost for each cleaning or replacing increases, the total annual cost of the system consisting

Fig. 5. Optimal maintenance schedule.

12 Table 3 The result of the design Number of RO trains Total number of modules Number of modules in train u1 Number of modules in train u2 Number of modules in train u3 Train u1 feed pressure, MPa Train u2 feed pressure, MPa Train u3 feed pressure, MPa Total power of the HP pump, kW Raw seawater feed ow, m3 h1 Permeate ow, m3 h1 Recovery ratio, % Total annualized cost, $ Specic energy consumption, kwh/m3 Product water cost, $/m3 1 190 190

Y.-y. Lu et al. / Journal of Membrane Science 282 (2006) 713

2 165 55 110 8.0 7.5 300 165 80 48 385710 4.0 0.61

8.1

300 190 80 42 409060 4.0 0.66

3 165 38 82 45 6.7 8.1 8.0 300 165 80 48 381800 4.1 0.60

ate rate increases. At the other intervals, the operating pressure must increase to maintain the permeate rate steady because the membrane performance deteriorate with time. So the proposed design model, which assumes that the module numbers of train is a variable, provides enough compensation for the difference in fouling among the trains to meeting the product targets. It is more exible and its cost is more effective than the conguration with equal number of modules per train [16]. Table 3 also presents that the optimal recovery ratio of the system consisting of 3 trains is 48%, the specic energy consumption is 4.1 kwh/m3 , and the minimum product water cost is $0.60/m3 . The results indicated that it is possible to obtain lower product water cost. 7. Conclusion This work has presented a systematic methodology for the optimal design of RO desalination system which considering membrane module cleaning and replacing. The design task has been formulated as an MINLP which minimizes the total annualized cost while subject to the thermodynamic, modeling, economic, environmental, and feasibility constraints. The optimum RO maintenance schedule is also determined in the design stage. The effectiveness of this design methodology has been demonstrated by solving a case study. This work used just a segment of system capital and operating cost. It is possible that if all contributions to capital and operating cost would be included in the model, the result of optimization could be different. Acknowledgement Financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 20376078) is gratefully acknowledged.

Fig. 6. The prole of operating pressure in train u3,2 .

of several trains may be obviously increase because they have more cleaning times. The train u3,2 , which among the system consisting of 3 trains, with 82 modules. It has more than the other two. So the modules of the train u3,2 need not be replaced during the maintenance period, however, this train has the highest frequency of cleaning operation among the three trains. The train u3,3 with 45 modules is replaced at the 1020th day (see Fig. 5). The reason is that the algorithm may consider that would effectively provide enough compensation for the difference in fouling among the trains to meeting the product targets. In the system, at least one of the trains should be cleaned at every period after 180 days. The uctuation of operating pressure of train u3,2 during the rst 2 operating years (see Fig. 6) reects the above phenomena, namely the cleaning actions of the other two trains affect the operating pressure of train u3,2 . Whether the train u3,2 is cleaned or the other two trains are cleaned, the operating pressure of train u3,2 is sharply degressive. The permeability variation with operating pressure in the train u3,2 shown in Fig. 7. In general, the permeate rate decreases when the pressure reduces. At the 240th and the 540th day, the modules of the train u3,2 are cleaned and therefore the perme-

Nomenclature A B C Ce Cm Co C1 C2 Co CCbp CCHpp CCin CCpx Nmax Nmin Nu OCbp OCc water permeability (kg s1 N1 ) solute transport parameter (kg s1 m2 ) concentration of solute ( l L1 ) electricity cost ($(kwh)1 ) membrane module cost ($) the operating cost charge rate water permeability decrease rate solute transport parameter increase rate average concentration on the high-pressure side ( L L1 ) capital cost of the booster pump ($) capital cost of the high-pressure pump ($) capital cost of the seawater intake pump ($) capital cost of the pressure exchanger ($) the module number of the maximum size train the module number of the minimum size train the number of modules in the u train energy cost of the booster pump ($) the cost of membrane module cleaning ($)

Fig. 7. The prole of permeate rate in train u3,2 .

Y.-y. Lu et al. / Journal of Membrane Science 282 (2006) 713

13

OCHpp OCin OCr P Q S t1 T T* T1 T2 TAC u U U* Z,K,R

energy cost of the high-pressure pump ($) energy cost of the intake pump ($) the cost of membrane module replacing ($) operating pressure (MPa) ow rate, (m3 h1 ) module surface area (m2 ) the rst interval length of each scheduling interval (d) temperature (K) operating day after the last cleaning (d) operating day after the last replacing (d) total annualized cost ($) membrane trains total number of membrane trains the optimal value of trains binary integer

in n px q

seawater inlet stream schedule interval pressure exchanger schedule subinterval

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Greek symbols 1 , 2 membrane performance decay constants P trans-membrane pressure drop (MPa) Hpp high pressure pump efciency motor electric motor efciency px pressure exchanger efciency osmosis pressure (MPa) 1 , 2 the constant that denote the membrane degraded extent Superscripts b brine stream f feed stream fmax upper bound on feed ow rate fmin lower bound on feed ow rate omax the brine maximum outlet ow rate omin the brine minimum outlet ow rate p permeate stream Subscripts bp booster pump Hpp high-pressure pump