The use of computer aided techniques for revere osmosis desalination layout design

This paper presents an efficient solution approach for large-scale, desalination process plant layout problems based on revese osmosis (RO) technology. The final plant layouts (i.e. coordinates and dimensions for each equipment item) are determined from an initial feasible solution followed by an iterative improvement procedure based on computer aided algorithms. The applicability of the solution algorithm is demonstrated through an illustrative example (125,000 m³/d). The computational results indicate that the proposed approach successfully achieves good quality solutions based on the objective function (short response time, and flexibility) for seawater desalination plants with modest computational requirements.