*Corresponding author: Salah Frioui
Laboratoire d’Analyses Industrielles et Génie des Matériaux (LAIGM), Université 8 Mai 1945 GUELMA, B.P.401, 24000, Algérie
ISSN: 0976-3031
Research Article
MODELISATION AND SIMULATION OF DESALTING PROCESS: A CASE STUDY
Salah Frioui
Laboratoire d’Analyses Industrielles et Génie des Matériaux (LAIGM), Université 8 Mai 1945 GUELMA, B.P.401,
24000, Algérie
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24327/ijrsr.2020.1107.5458
ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT
This paper presents a mathematical design model for calculations of the physical and thermodynamic properties
of the vapor and liquid streams, heat transfer coefficients, taking into consideration the nonlinearity of the
thermo-physical properties of seawater and steam.Realistic assumptions and where semi-empirical and empirical
equations are incorporated into the calculations will make the model practical and rigorous. Then a computer
program, named FLASH, was developed to simulate the operation of this process.
In order to validate the FLASH program, a comparison was made between the obtained results performed by
FLASH forOSW Company of Philadelphiawith the results of the same company with the same input data. Once
the comparison made and good agreement is obtained, then the programFLASH was performed for the plant of
desalination in the complex of Skikda. From results obtained, it is obvious that the simulated program performs
well.
From this study, the program proved to be able to converge reasonably quickly and the direct substitution
approach of solution proved to be successful for already existing plant process or new one!
INTRODUCTION
The rapid growth of the different fields in industry created
opportunities for new computer program languages. Computer
simulations have become a useful part of mathematical
modeling of many natural systems in physics, chemistry, and
biology, human systems in economics, psychology, and social
science and in the process of engineering new technology, to
gain insight into the operation of those systems.
The overall modeling approach was used to perform a mass and
energy balances of the thermal desalting process, heat transfer
equations, physical properties correlations and the temperature
losses due to boiling point variation. And then, we can establish
a simulation program to estimate rigorously the different
parameters and physicals properties of the system. For a given
design, optimisation of operating variables led to an increase in
distillate production rates and lower operating costs [1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8].
Traditionally, the formal modeling of systems has been via a
mathematical model, which attempts to find analytical
solutions to problems which enable the prediction of the
behavior of the system from a set of parameters (top brine
temperature, brine recirculation rate, intake flow rate, steam
conditions and flow rates). In addition, the selection of
optimum design and operation of MSF desalination plant is
aimed at reducing energy and operation costs such as, n major
cases, steam, electric power, anti-scale.
As it is reported in literature, the main features of the MSF
plant include variable capacity, slow dynamics, dead-time
characteristics due to certain load changes, significant effects of
small deviations from design conditions on plant operation,
effects of power plant output conditions on the desalination
plant, instability due to disturbances in steam supply, and water
temperature variations. All studies show some disturbances,
which may include feed seawater temperature, intake seawater
temperature, feed seawater flow rate, pressure, flow rate, pH,
concentration, brine and distillate levels in the last stage, brine
heater condensate level and the top brine temperature.
These developments were not fundamentally novel, rather they
were refinements to existing models and practices, and largely
based on the experience and observations programming
languages. There have been interesting researches in
modelisation and simulation, optimisation and control in terms
of parametric analysis, thermo-economic and thermodynamic
optimization towards the improvement of thermal desalination
processes.
Important research activities have been devoted to solve this
problematic. So, many models have been developped to find a
functional relationship between the design and operating
variables [7]. Modeling of the MSF process dates back to the
Available Online at http://www.recentscientific.com
International Journal of
Recent Scientific
Research
International Journal of Recent Scientific Research
Vol. 11, Issue, 07 (B), pp. 39192-39206, July, 2020
Copyright © Salah Frioui,, 2020, this is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
DOI: 10.24327/IJRSR
CODEN: IJRSFP (USA)
Article History:
Received 6
th
April, 2020
Received in revised form 15
th
May, 2020
Accepted 12
th
June, 2020
Published online 28
th
July, 2020
Key Words:
Simulation and optimization, mathematical
model, operating conditions,algorithm;,MSF
desalination plant.