Assessment of thermal and membrane seawater desalination technologies for tourism activities : an economic comparison

Abstract EN

Tourism activities are considered as a main supporting sector for many nations economics.

These activities are supported by many infrastructure utilities such as electricity, water, and communication systems.

In some regions, water is not readily available in quality and quantities required for human consumptions and utilizations.

In fact, water exists in form of high saline water (i.e.

brackish water or Seawater) and may contain pollutants and microorganisms that should be eliminated or treated by appropriate methods.

To overcome shortage of water, desalination processes are the most feasible approach that can be used to secure acceptable quality and quantity of water.

In this paper, opportunities of using different desalination processes for supplying water to tourism activities are explored in term of economics for a small coastal tourism town at three different scenarios of tourists populations; 250, 500 and 1000 persons, economic analysis is focused on estimating the cost of one cubic meter of water produced using four different types of desalination processes namely Multi Stage Flash, Multi Effect Evaporation, Mechanical Vapor Compression, and Reveres Osmosis.

Results, conclusions, and recommendations driven from this study are presented.