International Science and Technology Journal

This study evaluates the various operating conditions of the north Benghazi MSF desalination plant under its design constraints to determine the optimal operational conditions. The researchers begin with a discussion of the most important process variables that directly affect the production and performance ratio of the plant such as seawater flow rate, brine recirculating flow rate, make-up feed flow rate, and the temperature of the steam to brine heater. Thus, they constructed a computer code specially developed to simulate the plant’s steady state and study the effects of operational variables on the system output. To this end, only one variable is varied whereas all the other variables have the same values as those corresponding to the reference case. The results showed that the brine recirculation flow rate and temperature of steam introduced to the brine heater are of the most important operation variables which have a significant effect on the distillate product and performance ratio of the system. After that, the optimal operating conditions for achieving a stable plant operation were evaluated, and the operation envelope could be constructed. In this envelope, solid lines refer to the constant recirculation brine flow rate, which varies between values corresponding to the allowable limits of velocities through cooling tubes, while the dashed lines represent constant steam temperatures varied between its allowable limits. In summary, we can operate at any point within the envelope and on its borders.