A novel flash boosted multi-effect distillation process

[Truncated] Distillation is a kind of separation process which separates the component substances from a liquid mixture by selective evaporation and condensation phenomena. The outcomes of this process are both very low (sometimes nearly pure components) and high concentrate components. This procedure is very common in process industries such as desalination, refineries, food and beverage, and oil and gas.

In this project (thesis) a novel Flash Boosted Multi-Effect Distillation (FB-MED) process has been introduced. The FB-MED process is particularly effective when using low-grade sensible heat source, such as industrial waste heat or geothermal resources, with temperatures typically below 100°C. One of its main applications is in saline water distillation coupled with low grade sensible heat sources. Another application of this novel design is in the evaporation plant of alumina refineries to utilise their available low grade sensible heat resources for the aim of feed liquor evaporation to produce both freshwater and highly concentrated liquor.

Following the abovementioned applications, this process can also be customised for alumina refinery evaporation plants to utilise the available flashed vapour waste stream to reduce the live steam consumption, which is currently used as the heat source of the evaporation plant. This customised novel process, called Flash Boosted Thermal Vapour Compression Multi Effect Evaporation (FB-TVC-MEE), is introduced and explained.