Paper Title
Energy Analysis and Sustainable Operation of a Water Purification Processing Plant
Abstract
A water purification processing plant which employs a reverse osmosis technology was investigated in order to determine means to efficiently utilize energy in the provision of portable drinking water. The operational parameters of the operating units of the plant such as the rated power, operating efficiency and temperature were used to conduct the energy performance analysis of the plant. Also, the horsepower of the electrical generator employed as a power supplement and the average annual operating hours were used for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) analysis. The average operating hours of the electrical generator is 1092 hr/yr. The overall input and output energy of the plant as well as the plant energy efficiency were determined as 200.39 and 165.08 MJ, and 82.38% respectively. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) of the generating set reduces from 115.258 to 14.407 tons/yr as the horsepower of the generator reduced from 110 kVA (184.32 hp) to 13.75 kVA (23.04 hp) accordingly. Employing solar energy for powering the pumps operation instead of conventional electricity and generators helps in mitigating the use of fossil fuel generator, and lessen operational cost, air pollution and emissions respectively. Keywords - Water purification, Energy efficiency, Solar energy, Emissions