Open AccessRepurposing Reverse Osmosis Concentrate as a Low-Cost Thermal Energy Storage Medium
Author(s) -
Reza Baghaei Lakeh,
Christopher N. Salerno,
Ega P. Herlim,
Joseph Kiriakos,
Saied Delagah
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of clean energy technologies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1793-821X
DOI - 10.18178/jocet.2020.8.4.522
Subject(s) - reverse osmosis , environmental science , waste management , thermal energy storage , energy recovery , thermal energy , process engineering , brine , environmental engineering , chemistry , engineering , energy (signal processing) , mathematics , ecology , biochemistry , statistics , physics , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics , membrane , biology
The reject of the reverse osmosis water treatment process (aka brine, concentrate, ROC) is a mixture of salts that are dissolved in high salinity water. The ROC is classified as an industrial waste by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and can face regulatory limitations on disposal. State-of-the-art of ROC disposal includes deep-well injection, surface discharge to rivers, discharge to the ocean, and evaporation ponds. In this study, the feasibility of using Reverse Osmosis Concentrate as a low-cost Thermal Energy Storage (TES) medium is explored by a techno-economic analysis. The normalized cost of TES (cost per unit volume of stored thermal energy) is estimated through a series of cost analyses and is compared to the cost targets of the U.S. Department of Energy for low-cost thermal energy storage. It was shown that the normalized cost of TES using ROC salt content is in the range of $6.11 to $8.73 depending on ROC processing methods.