Performance Enhancement of MSF Desalination by Recovering Stage Heat from Distillate Water Using Internal Heat Exchanger

The paper presents an attempt to enhance unit performance of an existing 1274 m3/h Multi Stage Flash (MSF) desalination plant through sensible heat recovery from hot distillate water at the MSF stages to warm up the make-up seawater using internal heat exchange. The extraction of the distillate from stages could increase water production by 2% and reduces steam consumption by 5%. In addition, a reduction of seawater feed flow which also results in a drop of pump power consumption were observed. Environmentally, the modification could decrease CO2 emissions by 2300 tonnes annually.