Theoretical approach of freeze seawater desalination on flake ice maker utilizing LNG cold energy

•A new idea of utilizing cold energy in LNG in freeze desalination (FD) is introduced.•An intermediate refrigerant is suggested to transfer the cold energy from LNG to FD.•A FD process on flake ice maker using cold energy was designed and simulated by HYSYS.•A dynamic model of the freezing section was developed and simulated using gPROMS.•The power consumption of this LNG/FD hybrid process is found to be negligible.

In this work, a novel concept in freeze desalination (FD) was introduced. Nowadays the total liquefied natural gas (LNG) production capacity has reached 290 Mt/year. Its enormous cold energy released from re-gasification can be used in the freeze desalination process to minimize the overall energy consumption. A process of FD on flake ice maker utilizing LNG cold energy was designed and simulated by HYSYS software. An ice bucket on flake ice maker was chosen as seawater crystallizer mainly due to its continuous ice making and removing ice without heat source. A dynamic model of the freezing section has been developed and simulated through gPROMS software. The results show that the consumption of 1 kg equivalent LNG cold energy can obtain about 2 kg of ice melt water. In addition, it is shown that the power consumption of this LNG/FD hybrid process is negligible.