Membrane Capacitive Deionization (mCDI) desalination is an emerging technology that can, potentially, be scaled to an appropriate capacity and powered by photovoltaics for farm applications where costs of electrical power provision are prohibitive. In order to assess the critical influences of location and mCDI configuration on profitability, a farm scale economic model was developed to calculate annualized profits, internal rate of return, return period and bore salinity thresholds for farm profitability with mCDI desalination for a 10-year investment period for various crops at selected locations in south eastern Australia with known groundwater quality issues. Results show that the cost of water supply including bore drilling and pumping, mCDI desalination, photovoltaics, brine disposal and water storage is less than AU$1/m³ for typical field applications with salinity removals <2.3 dS/m. We show that application of mCDI improves profitability over irrigation with brackish water of between AU$2500/ha/yr and AU$44,200/ha/yr depending on the crop. By providing a system level cost analysis, the results highlight areas where there is scope for cost improvements in both mCDI desalination and agricultural processes. The operational scale mCDI performance and sizing model presented here can be modified for use in other desalination applications.

膜电容去离子（mCDI）脱盐技术是一种新兴技术，可以潜在地扩展到适当的容量，并通过光伏技术为农业应用提供电力，其中电力的供应成本很高。为了评估地理位置和mCDI配置对获利能力的关键影响，开发了农场规模经济模型，以计算十年获利的mCDI淡化对农场获利能力的年化利润，内部收益率，返还期限和盐度阈值在澳大利亚东南部选定地点存在已知地下水水质问题的各种作物的时期。结果表明，包括钻孔和抽水，mCDI海水淡化，光伏，盐水处理和储水在内的供水成本不到1澳元/米³适用于盐分去除率小于2.3 dS / m的典型现场应用。我们显示，根据灌溉作物的不同，mCDI的应用可提高微咸水灌溉的收益，介于AU $ 2500 / ha / yr和AU $ 44,200 / ha / yr之间。通过提供系统级别的成本分析，结果突出显示了mCDI脱盐和农业生产过程中仍有改进成本空间的领域。此处介绍的运营规模mCDI性能和尺寸模型可以进行修改，以用于其他脱盐应用。