The energy requirements for reverse osmosis (RO) seawater desalination continue to be a major matter of debate. Previous studies have shown the dependence of optimum RO desalination energy on the RO recovery rate. However, they overlooked including the effect of Energy Recovery Device (ERD) and pretreatment on the power consumption. In this work, a computer model was used to analyze the energy requirements for RO desalination, taking into account the effect of ERD efficiencies and pretreatment. The specific power consumption (SPC) of the RO was found to increase with the increase of RO recovery rate when the ERD system was included. The optimum SPC became more dependent on the RO recovery rate when the pretreatment energy was added. The recovery for optimum desalination energy was 46%, 44%, and 40% for the RO system coupled with an ERD of 65%, 80%, and 95% efficiency, respectively. The results showed that RO process could be operated at lower recovery rate and still meet the projected desalination capacity by increasing the feed flow rate and coupling with high-efficiency ERD. A trivial decrease of the total desalination energy was achieved when the feed flow rate increased from 7 m³/h to 8 m³/h and recovery rate decreased from 46% to 44% by coupling the RO with an ERD of 95% efficiency. This suggests that the RO–ERD system can be operated at a high feed flow rate and low recovery rate without affecting the plant capacity.

反渗透（RO）海水淡化的能源需求仍然是一个主要争论的问题。先前的研究表明最佳的RO脱盐能取决于RO回收率。但是，他们忽略了包括能量回收设备（ERD）和预处理对功耗的影响。在这项工作中，考虑到ERD效率和预处理的影响，使用了计算机模型来分析RO脱盐所需的能量。发现当包括ERD系统时，RO的单位功耗（SPC）随着RO恢复率的增加而增加。当添加预处理能量时，最佳SPC更加取决于RO的回收率。RO系统的最佳脱盐能回收率为46％，44％和40％，ERD为65％，80％，和95％的效率。结果表明，通过提高进料流速并结合高效ERD，RO工艺可以在较低的回收率下运行，并且仍能满足预计的脱盐能力。当进料流量从7 m增加时，总脱盐能的降低³ / h至8 m ³ / h，通过将RO与效率为95％的ERD耦合，回收率从46％降至44％。这表明RO-ERD系统可以在高进料流速和低回收率的条件下运行，而不会影响工厂产能。