Abstract
Exergy analysis is a valuable engineering tool for the design, optimization and performance evaluation. This paper conducts thermodynamic exergy analysis using actual plant operating data of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant at Tajoura Nuclear Research Center. Exergy flow rates are calculated all over the plant. The rates of exergy destruction and their percentages are determined so that the sites of highest exergy destruction can simply be recognized. The highest exergy destruction 48.32% happens in the 1st stage high pressure pump (HPP), where the second law efficiency of the plant was 25.65% using the old style turbine and high energy consumption membranes. This shows that chances of development might be to reduce exergy destruction and make the plant operation more cost effective. The second law efficiency of Tajoura desalination plant was increased to 35.76% by using new membranes with high production rate and low energy consumption. Moreover, other things were taken into account for increasing the efficiency of the plant through the use of high efficiency energy recovery devices (ERD) such as pressure exchangers (PX).