Techno-economic analysis of brine treatment by multi-crystallization separation process for zero liquid discharge

This study analyses the concept of a novel multi-crystallization system to achieve zero liquid discharge (ZLD) for desalination plants using an innovative heat recovery system consisting of a heat transfer fluid and a compressor to reduce energy consumption. The main focus is to recover water and separately extract salts from seawater brines with high purity, including calcite, anhydrite, sodium chloride, and epsomite, which can be sold to the cement industry. The system is compared with a conventional brine treatment system. The energy demand and economic feasibility of both systems are assessed to evaluate profitability at a scale of 1000 kg/h. The results estimate that the utilization of a heat recovery fluid reduces energy consumption from 690 kWhth/ton of feed brine to 125.90 kWhth/ton equaling a total electric consumption of 60.72 kWhe/ton. The system can recover 99.2% of water and reduce brine discharge mass by 98.9%. The system can recover 53.8% of calcite at near 100% purity, 96.4% of anhydrite at 97.7% purity, 91.6% of NaCl at near 100% purity, and 71.1% of epsomite at 40.7% purity. Resource recovery accounts for additional revenues, with halite and water accounting respectively for 69.85% and 29.52% of the income. The contribution of calcite and anhydrite to revenue is very low due to their low production. The levelized cost of water (LCOW) of the multi-crystallization system is 13.79 USD/m3 as opposed to 7.85 USD/m3 for the conventional ZLD system. The economic analyses estimate that the conventional ZLD system can achieve payback after 7.69 years. The high electricity cost, which accounts for 68.7% of the annual expenses, can be produced from renewable sources.