ABSTRACT
Water and power are two basic resources for the economic development, livelihood and well-being of a country's population. The practical seawater desalination methods available are either thermally driven, such as multi-stage flash (MSF) distillation, multi-effect distillation (MED) and adsorption desalination (AD), or pressure- or work-driven, such as reverse osmosis (RO). This chapter discusses the misperceptions of primary fuel-cost apportionment for water production in cogeneration plants, which have beset the enthalpy accounting method of seawater desalination. For thermal desalination systems, much literature is available on quantitative analysis and thermodynamic analysis but such analyses do not accommodate the quality of energy utilized by the process. In cogeneration plants, desalination technology selection depends on individual systems efficiency. Thermal systems can be compared with RO processes to provide the best choice if there is an option to select between power plant (PP)+MED or PP+RO.
