Design and Analysis of Desalination Process using LNG Cold Energy

Liquefied natural gas undergoes a process of vaporization to be supplied as city gas, which generates about 800 kJ/kg of cold energy. Currently, all of this cold energy is being dumped into the sea, resulting in a very serious energy waste from the point of view of energy recycling. In this study, a seawater desalination process that can utilize the wasted cold energy was proposed, and this process was optimized to analyze the specific power consumption and economic feasibility. As a result, the specific energy consumption of the proposed process was calculated as -5.2kWh/m(3), and the production cost of the pure water was 0.148 USD/m(3), confirming that it is superior to any other process developed so far.