This work proposes a carbon-neutral desalination process. For this, at first a rigorous theoretical framework for multieffect desalination coupled with a thermal vapor compressor (MED-TVC) is developed to validate with the data set of a plant operated in Libya and to show the outperformance over an existing model. A mechanical vapor compressor (MVC) is proposed to integrate with MED, and the hot brine and distillate withdrawn from that MED are employed for feed preheating. A multiobjective genetic algorithm -based optimizer is formulated with three conflicting objectives, namely, productivity, CO₂ emission, and production cost that includes carbon tax. The proposed MED-MVC outperforms MED-TVC in terms of all of those performance metrics. Subsequently, we move to transform this MED-MVC process to a carbon-neutral unit by introducing solar energy to generate makeup steam and electricity. This innovative sustainable zero-emission desalination process secures higher productivity at a lower cost than the existing MED-TVC plant scenario.

中文翻译：

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碳中和的高产太阳能海水淡化工艺：通过碳定价提高经济绩效


这项工作提出了一种碳中性海水淡化工艺。为此，首先开发了一个严格的多效海水淡化与热蒸汽压缩机 (MED-TVC) 相结合的理论框架，以利用利比亚运营的工厂的数据集进行验证，并显示其优于现有模型的性能。建议将机械蒸汽压缩机（MVC）与MED集成，从MED中取出的热盐水和馏出物用于进料预热。基于多目标遗传算法的优化器由三个相互冲突的目标制定，即生产率、CO ₂ 排放量和包括碳税的生产成本。就所有这些性能指标而言，拟议的 MED-MVC 均优于 MED-TVC。随后，我们通过引入太阳能来产生补充蒸汽和电力，将该 MED-MVC 工艺转变为碳中和装置。与现有的 MED-TVC 工厂相比，这种创新的可持续零排放海水淡化工艺能够以更低的成本确保更高的生产率。