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Estimation of water production cost in the feasibility analysis of RO systems

Article  in  Desalination · November 2005

DOI: 10.1016/j.desal.2005.02.065

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 Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258

Estimation of water production cost in the feasibility

analysis of RO systems

U. Atikol, Hikmet S. Aybar*

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eastern Mediterranean University, G. Magosa, Northern Cyprus, Mersin
10 Turkey Tel. þ90 392 630 1451; Fax þ90 392 365 3715; email: [email protected]

Received 7 February 2005; accepted 21 February 2005

Abstract
In this study a practical method is developed where the recent experiences are modified according to the local
conditions for making reasonable estimations of the unit production cost of fresh water for new RO systems to be
constructed. Some of the most important cost components are determined as the capital cost, the electricity cost, and
the costs related to maintenance, membrane replacement and chemicals. In the construction of a 1000 m3/day RO
plant in Eastern Mediterranean University, it was possible to take the sea water through a well on the coast before
feeding it into the RO plant. It was also planned to use an energy recovery system which would reduce the overall
production cost of fresh water. Although a similar plant was discovered to have produced fresh water at a cost of
0.86 $/m3, after making a comparison of all the main factors affecting the unit cost of water it was estimated that the
unit cost of water should be approximately 0.68 $/m3 for the new plant to be constructed in the university. It was
observed that the unit cost is approximately 0.7 $/m3 after the plant was erected and put into operation.

Keywords: Reverse osmosis; Water production cost

1. Introduction a number of African and Middle Eastern coun-

tries, as well as on remote islands such as Can-
Inadequate supply of fresh water of accepta- ary Islands, Seychelles, Maldives, and Greek
ble quality is one of the critical limiting factors Islands. Although, RO has emerged as the
in achieving sustainable development on many most feasible small-scale desalination technol-
remote islands as well as in some coastal ogy, RO desalination is energy intensive
regions. Reverse osmosis (RO) systems found and not a viable solution for remote regions
widespread use in these regions, notably in where electricity is in short supply. However,
utilization of alternative energy sources such as
*Corresponding author. wind power holds promise as a solution to this

Presented at the Conference on Desalination and the Environment, Santa Margherita, Italy, 22–26 May 2005.
European Desalination Society.
0011-9164/05/$– See front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
254 U. Atikol, H.S. Aybar / Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258

problem, as most of these remote islands are reduction in rainfall, the quantities of water
subject to constant trade winds. Prototype sys- available for both drinking and irrigation
tems are constructed and put on trial use, such purposes have not been adequate for the
as the system on Coconut Island off the wind- past years. Eventually, rationing was imple-
ward coast of Oahu, Hawaii [1]. mented to keep the problem under control.
Canary Islands, on the other hand, with a Northern part of Cyprus has also been
population of 1.7 million people – but a tour- troubled with water scarcity for many long
ist population reaching 10 million people per years. Moreover, existing supplies are poor
year – are told to be a world laboratory for in terms of quality – mostly salty above
desalination on remote islands [2]. Especially acceptable levels for domestic or agricultural
on Lanzarote, one of the seven islands, more use. Therefore, rationing measures have been
than 80% of total water consumption is in effect for many years, especially in domes-
achieved through desalination techniques. tic water supply made to the cities. Many
Therefore, it is actually difficult to imagine years of rationing measures, however, led to
the survival of communities and tourism on corrosion in water distribution infrastructure
the islands without the extensive application of almost all cities, increasing maintenance
of different desalination techniques. It is costs as well as constituting a significant risk
important to make use of the lessons learned for public health.
in these applications. So far, many studies were carried to hin-
The policy makers, quite often, need to der the flow of rainwater to the sea, mainly
estimate the water production cost of con- by building water dams and ponds. Import
structing RO plants in countries where the of sweet water from Turkey was also
RO systems have never been established utilized for a limited period of time, but
before. The object of this study is to develop technological problems were raised in the
a practical method where the recent experi- application phase. Therefore, in addition to
ences are modified according to the local con- some precautions such as rationing mea-
ditions for making accurate estimations of the sures and use of modern irrigation techni-
unit production cost of fresh water. ques, there is an immediate need for new
and permanent solutions. At this point,
desalination of seawater appears as a suita-
2. Northern Cyprus brief
ble solution to the water scarcity problem of
In Cyprus, an island in the Eastern Medi- N. Cyprus, as today’s desalination technol-
terranean Sea, droughts occur frequently due ogies are at an acceptable level both ecolo-
to highly variable rainfall and no rivers flow- gically and economically.
ing continuously throughout the year. More- Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU)
over, it is observed that the yearly average is the oldest and largest university in N.
rainfall figures have fallen considerably. Cyprus, with a population of over 13,500
While historically groundwater was the main students, student dormitories with a capacity
fresh water source on the island, eventually, reaching 4500 and staff over 2000. Within
an important portion of this source was the campus area, a 154,000 m2 of green
depleted as a result of overuse or seawater field site exist with over 600 trees. Daily
intrusion near coastal regions. Unfortunately, water need of the University is determined
as a result of increasing demand for domestic as 2000 m3 and 1000 m3 of this amount is
and industrial use, as well as a further currently obtained from the Municipality,
 U. Atikol, H.S. Aybar / Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258 255

while the rest is obtained from the university The estimation of some of the most import-
RO desalination plant that was put into ant cost components are explained as follows:
operation in 2003.

4.1. Capital cost effect

3. Factors affecting water production cost
In order to evaluate the effect of direct capi-
Several design and operational factors can tal cost on C, the following equation is used over
affect the unit cost in $/m3 of water produced. the estimated period of the life time of the plant.
These factors are explained by El-Dessouky
et al. [3] in detail and can be summarized here Dcapital
Ccapital ¼ ð2Þ
as site conditions, plant capacity, qualified VL
manpower, energy cost, salinity, quality of
feed water, plant life and amortization. where L is the life time of the system in hours,
El-Dessouky et al. indicated that the elements which is assumed to be equivalent 30 years
of economic calculations are essentially cate- (L = 259,200 hr). VL is the total volume of
gorized as follows: water produced during the lifetime (i.e. 30
1. Direct capital cost (Dcapital) years) of the system.
2. Indirect capital cost
3. Annual operating cost 4.2. Cost of electricity
Dcapital includes land cost, process equip-
ment, buildings, membrane cost, brine dis- Electricity is mainly consumed by the
posal, well supply and auxiliary equipment. pumps. The total pump work can be esti-
Indirect costs on the other hand are costs mated as follows:
such as insurance, construction overhead,
X Pk ðkPaÞ  Vpump;k ðm3 =sÞ
owner’s costs and contingency. Annual oper- Wpumps ðkWÞ ¼
ating costs are those related to electricity, k
k
labor, membrane replacement, insurance,
ð3Þ
chemicals, amortization, maintenance and
spares. where, Vpump,k is the volumetric flow rate in
pump k, Pk is the pressure increase and is
4. Method of cost estimation the efficiency associated with pump k.
Hourly cost of electricity consumption for
In order to estimate the water production pumping can be estimated using total pump
cost of a RO plant before it is constructed it work as:
is essential to search for the similar plants
constructed around the world. After gather- Epumps ð$=hÞ ¼ Wpumps ðkWÞ
ing information about the RO plants and
their local conditions the factors affecting  Electricity Rateð$=kWhÞ ð4Þ
the unit cost of water can be expressed as,
In order to evaluate the portion of electricity
3
Cð$=m Þ ¼ C1 þ C2 þ C3 þ . . . þ Cn ð1Þ cost on C, the following equation is used:

Epumps  L
where Cn is the unit cost component for each Celect ¼ ð5Þ
variable (or factor) n. VL
256 U. Atikol, H.S. Aybar / Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258

4.3. Maintenance and spares 4.7. Manpower cost

The maintenance cost (M) can be esti- The unit cost component of manpower
mated as a value of 2% of the Dcapital on a used during the operational life of the plant
yearly basis, such that; is assigned the variable Cmanpr.

Mð$Þ ¼ Dcapital ð$Þ  0:02  Years ð6Þ

4.8. Interest rate
The effect of maintenance on C can be eval- The interest rate, i, is used to calculate the
uated as follows: amortization factor as follows:

M ið1 þ iÞyears
Cmaint ¼ ð7Þ a¼ ð9Þ
VL ð1 þ iÞyears  1

The cost component related to the interest

4.4. Chemicals cost rate is evaluated as follows:
The unit cost component due to chemicals Dcapital  a  years
(Cchem) over the lifetime of the plant can be Cintr ¼ ð10Þ
VL
taken to be a value between 0.025 and
0.035 $/m3 [3].
Finally, for estimating the unit production
cost, C, of the fresh water in the lifetime of
the equipment the following equation can be
4.5. Membrane replacement used;
Replacement rate of membranes may vary
between 5–20% of the membrane purchase Cð$=m3 Þ ¼ Ccapital þ Cmaint þ Cmemb þ Celect
cost per year [3]. þ Cchem þ Cpretr þ Cmanpr
  Pmemb  Years þ Cintr þ Cothers ð11Þ
Cmemb ¼ ð8Þ
VL
where Cothers are the costs attributed to fac-
where Pmemb is the membrane purchase cost tors not discussed here. In order to predict
and  is a value between 0.05 and 0.2, the unit production cost of water (Cpredict), a
depending on the salinity and the quality of comparison can be made between the unit
water. cost of the reference plant (Cref) and the
sum of the differences in all the components
mentioned in Eq. 11, such that:
4.6. Pre-treatment cost
X
The unit cost component due to the pur- Cpredict ¼ Cref þ Cn ð12Þ
chase of equipment and other materials n
related to pre-treatment during the opera-
tional life of the plant is assigned the variable where Cn is the difference in cost com-
Cpretr. ponent n.
 U. Atikol, H.S. Aybar / Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258 257

5. An application for northern Cyprus well filtered water in the desalination process
A water desalination plant of a capacity of which would cut down the pre-treatment,
1000 m3/day was needed in the EMU. It was chemicals and membrane replacement-costs.
decided to set up an RO plant near the sea and Moreover, the plant was to be designed to
desalinate the sea water for meeting the demand. have an energy recovery pressure exchanger
The economic parameters of a plant that can be (PX) facility on it. The reject brine from the
taken as reference can be seen in Table 1. The membranes is passed through the PX unit,
unit production cost of an RO plant with a where its pressure energy is transferred
capacity of 1000 m3/day is given to be approxi- directly to a portion of the incoming raw
mately 0.86 $/m3 under these conditions [4]. seawater at up to 95% efficiency. This tech-
Information from the literature [3,4] was used nology could save up to 57% pump power
together with the methodology described above compared to a system with no recovery [5].
to estimate the unit production cost of water. A The average electricity rate in N. Cyprus is
comparative analysis of the reference data and $0.08/kWh. An estimation of C under these
the local conditions is shown in Table 2. local conditions was made in Table 2. At first
The new RO plant was to be constructed Cchem was expected to be low (i.e. 0.025 $/m3)
on the university land and the cost of land due to naturally-filtered seawater drawn from
was not included in the costs. It was possible the well. This would yield a unit production
to dig a well where the sea water was to be cost to be 0.255 $/m3 less than the unit cost
drawn from. This allowed the use of naturally obtained from the reference [4]. However, it
was soon realized that due to N. Cyprus
being a small part of an island there were
Table 1
Values of the common economic parameters of the
not many suppliers of chemicals and Cchem
reference plant [4] was more likely to be 4 times higher than it
was anticipated (i.e. 0.1 $/m3). The estima-
System life (years) 30 tion-accounts were revised (shown in brackets
Interest rate (%) 5 in Table 2) after which it was predicted that
Maintenance (% of plant cost) 2
the unit cost should be 0.18 $/m3 less than
Manpower ($/m3) 0.05
Pre-treatment ($/m3) 0.035 that of the reference plant. Finally, the unit
Electricity ($/m3) 0.04 production cost of the prospective plant was
estimated to be 0.68 $/m3 by using Eq. 12.

Table 2
A Comparative analysis for estimating DC

Unit cost factors Reference data ($/m3) Local data ($/m3) Difference ($/m3)
Ccapital 0.11 0.065 0.046
Celect 0.09 0.08 0.01
Cmemb 0.052 0.0174 0.035
Cpretr 0.035 0.0035 0.032
Cmaint 0.061 0.039 0.022
Cchem 0.035 0.025 (0.1) 0.01 (þ0.065)
Cmanpr 0.05 0.021 0.029
Cintr 0.199 0.126 0.073
P
C = 0.255 (0.18)
 258 U. Atikol, H.S. Aybar / Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258

After the RO plant was completed and References

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covered that the unit cost, C, was approxi- Resources Research Center, Desalination of
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that the unit cost was estimated within an osmosis, (http://www.wrrc.hawaii.edu/research/
error of 2.9%. project_liu/desalination.html).
[2] D.P. Garcia, Desalination plant in Canary
Islands sets new low energy record, (http://
6. Conclusion
www.islandsonline.org/island2010/PDF).
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Techno-economic evaluation of a solar powered
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