A cost benefit analysis of a reverse osmosis desalination plant with and without advanced energy recovery devices

In recent decades seawater desalination has represented reliable and perhaps financially attractive technology to overcome water scarcity. The largest problem with this solution for solving water shortage is the cost of seawater desalination and the main portion of the total cost of desalination of water is energy consumption. One of the efficient approaches to decrease specific energy consumption is using an energy recovery device (ERDs). The total operating cost of desalination plant will considerably decrease in order to using this technology. Due to this reduction levelized cost of water (LCOW) is also decline. The aim of this study was to evaluate financially the installation of an energy recovery device on a seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant in North Cyprus. The plant is designed to have daily capacity of 66000 m3 of fresh drinking water. In this study the specific energy consumption and levelized cost of production for the base case scenario (seawater desalination plant without energy recovery device) and the incentive scenario (seawater desalination plant with energy recovery device) were conducted to illustrate the impact of an energy recovery device on seawater desalination plant. We performed a financial analysis from the owner’s point of view and the banker’s point of view to determine the feasibility and sustainability of the project under scenario II (seawater desalination plant with ERDs) to determine if it is a good way to reduce desalination cost and total and variable levelized cost of production. Keywords: Seawater desalination, Energy recovery device, levelized cost of production, Specific energy consumption (SEC), Cost reduction, North Cyprus.