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Estimation of water production cost in the feasibility analysis of RO systems

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DOI: 10.1016/j.desal.2005.02.065

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 Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258

Estimation of water production cost in the feasibility

analysis of RO systems

U. Atikol, Hikmet S. Aybar*

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eastern Mediterranean University, G. Magosa, Northern Cyprus, Mersin
10 Turkey Tel. þ90 392 630 1451; Fax þ90 392 365 3715; email: hikmet.aybar@emu.edu.tr

Received 7 February 2005; accepted 21 February 2005

Abstract
In this study a practical method is developed where the recent experiences are modified according to the local
conditions for making reasonable estimations of the unit production cost of fresh water for new RO systems to be
constructed. Some of the most important cost components are determined as the capital cost, the electricity cost, and
the costs related to maintenance, membrane replacement and chemicals. In the construction of a 1000 m3/day RO
plant in Eastern Mediterranean University, it was possible to take the sea water through a well on the coast before
feeding it into the RO plant. It was also planned to use an energy recovery system which would reduce the overall
production cost of fresh water. Although a similar plant was discovered to have produced fresh water at a cost of
0.86 $/m3, after making a comparison of all the main factors affecting the unit cost of water it was estimated that the
unit cost of water should be approximately 0.68 $/m3 for the new plant to be constructed in the university. It was
observed that the unit cost is approximately 0.7 $/m3 after the plant was erected and put into operation.

Keywords: Reverse osmosis; Water production cost

1. Introduction a number of African and Middle Eastern coun-

Inadequate supply of fresh water of accepta-
ble quality is one of the critical limiting factors
in achieving sustainable development on many
remote islands as well as in some coastal
regions. Reverse osmosis (RO) systems found
widespread use in these regions, notably in
*Corresponding author.
tries, as well as on remote islands such as Can-
ary Islands, Seychelles, Maldives, and Greek
Islands. Although, RO has emerged as the
most feasible small-scale desalination technol-
ogy, RO desalination is energy intensive
and not a viable solution for remote regions
where electricity is in short supply. However,
utilization of alternative energy sources such as
wind power holds promise as a solution to this

Presented at the Conference on Desalination and the Environment, Santa Margherita, Italy, 22–26 May 2005.
European Desalination Society.
0011-9164/05/$– See front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
254 U. Atikol, H.S. Aybar / Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258
problem, as most of these remote islands are
subject to constant trade winds. Prototype sys-
tems are constructed and put on trial use, such
as the system on Coconut Island off the wind-
ward coast of Oahu, Hawaii [1].
Canary Islands, on the other hand, with a
population of 1.7 million people – but a tour-
ist population reaching 10 million people per
year – are told to be a world laboratory for
desalination on remote islands [2]. Especially
on Lanzarote, one of the seven islands, more
than 80% of total water consumption is
achieved through desalination techniques.
Therefore, it is actually difficult to imagine
the survival of communities and tourism on
the islands without the extensive application
of different desalination techniques. It is
important to make use of the lessons learned
in these applications.
The policy makers, quite often, need to
estimate the water production cost of con-
structing RO plants in countries where the
RO systems have never been established
before. The object of this study is to develop
a practical method where the recent experi-
ences are modified according to the local con-
ditions for making accurate estimations of the
unit production cost of fresh water.
2. Northern Cyprus brief
In Cyprus, an island in the Eastern Medi-
terranean Sea, droughts occur frequently due
to highly variable rainfall and no rivers flow-
ing continuously throughout the year. More-
over, it is observed that the yearly average
rainfall figures have fallen considerably.
While historically groundwater was the main
fresh water source on the island, eventually,
an important portion of this source was
depleted as a result of overuse or seawater
intrusion near coastal regions. Unfortunately,
as a result of increasing demand for domestic
and industrial use, as well as a further
reduction in rainfall, the quantities of water
available for both drinking and irrigation
purposes have not been adequate for the
past years. Eventually, rationing was imple-
mented to keep the problem under control.
Northern part of Cyprus has also been
troubled with water scarcity for many long
years. Moreover, existing supplies are poor
in terms of quality – mostly salty above
acceptable levels for domestic or agricultural
use. Therefore, rationing measures have been
in effect for many years, especially in domes-
tic water supply made to the cities. Many
years of rationing measures, however, led to
corrosion in water distribution infrastructure
of almost all cities, increasing maintenance
costs as well as constituting a significant risk
for public health.
So far, many studies were carried to hin-
der the flow of rainwater to the sea, mainly
by building water dams and ponds. Import
of sweet water from Turkey was also
utilized for a limited period of time, but
technological problems were raised in the
application phase. Therefore, in addition to
some precautions such as rationing mea-
sures and use of modern irrigation techni-
ques, there is an immediate need for new
and permanent solutions. At this point,
desalination of seawater appears as a suita-
ble solution to the water scarcity problem of
N. Cyprus, as today’s desalination technol-
ogies are at an acceptable level both ecolo-
gically and economically.
Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU)
is the oldest and largest university in N.
Cyprus, with a population of over 13,500
students, student dormitories with a capacity
reaching 4500 and staff over 2000. Within
the campus area, a 154,000 m2 of green
field site exist with over 600 trees. Daily
water need of the University is determined
as 2000 m3 and 1000 m3 of this amount is
currently obtained from the Municipality,
 U. Atikol, H.S. Aybar / Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258
while the rest is obtained from the university
RO desalination plant that was put into
operation in 2003.
3. Factors affecting water production cost
Several design and operational factors can
affect the unit cost in $/m3 of water produced.
These factors are explained by El-Dessouky
et al. [3] in detail and can be summarized here
as site conditions, plant capacity, qualified
manpower, energy cost, salinity, quality of
feed water, plant life and amortization.
El-Dessouky et al. indicated that the elements
of economic calculations are essentially cate-
gorized as follows:
1. Direct capital cost (Dcapital)
2. Indirect capital cost
3. Annual operating cost
Dcapital includes land cost, process equip-
ment, buildings, membrane cost, brine dis-
posal, well supply and auxiliary equipment.
Indirect costs on the other hand are costs
such as insurance, construction overhead,
owner’s costs and contingency. Annual oper-
ating costs are those related to electricity,
labor, membrane replacement, insurance,
chemicals, amortization, maintenance and
spares.
4. Method of cost estimation
In order to estimate the water production
cost of a RO plant before it is constructed it
is essential to search for the similar plants
constructed around the world. After gather-
ing information about the RO plants and
their local conditions the factors affecting
the unit cost of water can be expressed as,
3
Cð$=m Þ ¼ C1 þ C2 þ C3 þ . . . þ Cn ð1Þ
where Cn is the unit cost component for each
variable (or factor) n.
255
The estimation of some of the most import-
ant cost components are explained as follows:
4.1. Capital cost effect
In order to evaluate the effect of direct capi-
tal cost on C, the following equation is used over
the estimated period of the life time of the plant.
Dcapital
Ccapital ¼ ð2Þ
VL
where L is the life time of the system in hours,
which is assumed to be equivalent 30 years
(L = 259,200 hr). VL is the total volume of
water produced during the lifetime (i.e. 30
years) of the system.
4.2. Cost of electricity
Electricity is mainly consumed by the
pumps. The total pump work can be esti-
mated as follows:
X Pk ðkPaÞ  Vpump;k ðm3 =sÞ
Wpumps ðkWÞ ¼
k
k
ð3Þ
where, Vpump,k is the volumetric flow rate in
pump k, Pk is the pressure increase and is
the efficiency associated with pump k.
Hourly cost of electricity consumption for
pumping can be estimated using total pump
work as:
Epumps ð$=hÞ ¼ Wpumps ðkWÞ
 Electricity Rateð$=kWhÞ ð4Þ
In order to evaluate the portion of electricity
cost on C, the following equation is used:
Epumps  L
Celect ¼ ð5Þ
VL
256 U. Atikol, H.S. Aybar / Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258
4.3. Maintenance and spares
The maintenance cost (M) can be esti-
mated as a value of 2% of the Dcapital on a
yearly basis, such that;
Mð$Þ ¼ Dcapital ð$Þ  0:02  Years ð6Þ
The effect of maintenance on C can be eval-
uated as follows:
M ið1 þ iÞyears
Cmaint ¼ ð7Þ
VL
4.4. Chemicals cost
The unit cost component due to chemicals
(Cchem) over the lifetime of the plant can be
taken to be a value between 0.025 and
0.035 $/m3 [3].
4.5. Membrane replacement
Replacement rate of membranes may vary
between 5–20% of the membrane purchase
cost per year [3].
  Pmemb  Years
Cmemb ¼ ð8Þ
VL
where Pmemb is the membrane purchase cost
and  is a value between 0.05 and 0.2,
depending on the salinity and the quality of
water.
4.6. Pre-treatment cost
The unit cost component due to the pur-
chase of equipment and other materials
related to pre-treatment during the opera-
tional life of the plant is assigned the variable
Cpretr.
4.7. Manpower cost
The unit cost component of manpower
used during the operational life of the plant
is assigned the variable Cmanpr.
4.8. Interest rate
The interest rate, i, is used to calculate the
amortization factor as follows:
a¼ ð9Þ
ð1 þ iÞyears  1
The cost component related to the interest
rate is evaluated as follows:
Dcapital  a  years
Cintr ¼ ð10Þ
VL
Finally, for estimating the unit production
cost, C, of the fresh water in the lifetime of
the equipment the following equation can be
used;
Cð$=m3 Þ ¼ Ccapital þ Cmaint þ Cmemb þ Celect
þ Cchem þ Cpretr þ Cmanpr
þ Cintr þ Cothers ð11Þ
where Cothers are the costs attributed to fac-
tors not discussed here. In order to predict
the unit production cost of water (Cpredict), a
comparison can be made between the unit
cost of the reference plant (Cref) and the
sum of the differences in all the components
mentioned in Eq. 11, such that:
X
Cpredict ¼ Cref þ Cn ð12Þ
n
where Cn is the difference in cost com-
ponent n.
 U. Atikol, H.S. Aybar / Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258 257

5. An application for northern Cyprus
A water desalination plant of a capacity of
1000 m3/day was needed in the EMU. It was
decided to set up an RO plant near the sea and
desalinate the sea water for meeting the demand.
The economic parameters of a plant that can be
taken as reference can be seen in Table 1. The
unit production cost of an RO plant with a
capacity of 1000 m3/day is given to be approxi-
mately 0.86 $/m3 under these conditions [4].
Information from the literature [3,4] was used
together with the methodology described above
to estimate the unit production cost of water. A
comparative analysis of the reference data and
the local conditions is shown in Table 2.
The new RO plant was to be constructed
on the university land and the cost of land
was not included in the costs. It was possible
to dig a well where the sea water was to be
drawn from. This allowed the use of naturally
Table 1
Values of the common economic parameters of the
reference plant [4]
System life (years) 30
Interest rate (%) 5 in Table 2) after which it was predicted that
Maintenance (% of plant cost) 2
Manpower ($/m3) 0.05
Pre-treatment ($/m3) 0.035
Electricity ($/m3) 0.04
well filtered water in the desalination process
which would cut down the pre-treatment,
chemicals and membrane replacement-costs.
Moreover, the plant was to be designed to
have an energy recovery pressure exchanger
(PX) facility on it. The reject brine from the
membranes is passed through the PX unit,
where its pressure energy is transferred
directly to a portion of the incoming raw
seawater at up to 95% efficiency. This tech-
nology could save up to 57% pump power
compared to a system with no recovery [5].
The average electricity rate in N. Cyprus is
$0.08/kWh. An estimation of C under these
local conditions was made in Table 2. At first
Cchem was expected to be low (i.e. 0.025 $/m3)
due to naturally-filtered seawater drawn from
the well. This would yield a unit production
cost to be 0.255 $/m3 less than the unit cost
obtained from the reference [4]. However, it
was soon realized that due to N. Cyprus
being a small part of an island there were
not many suppliers of chemicals and Cchem
was more likely to be 4 times higher than it
was anticipated (i.e. 0.1 $/m3). The estima-
tion-accounts were revised (shown in brackets
the unit cost should be 0.18 $/m3 less than
that of the reference plant. Finally, the unit
production cost of the prospective plant was
estimated to be 0.68 $/m3 by using Eq. 12.

Table 2
A Comparative analysis for estimating DC

Unit cost factors Reference data ($/m3) Local data ($/m3) Difference ($/m3)
Ccapital 0.11 0.065 0.046
Celect 0.09 0.08 0.01
Cmemb 0.052 0.0174 0.035
Cpretr 0.035 0.0035 0.032
Cmaint 0.061 0.039 0.022
Cchem 0.035 0.025 (0.1) 0.01 (þ0.065)
Cmanpr 0.05 0.021 0.029
Cintr 0.199 0.126 0.073
P
C = 0.255 (0.18)
 258 U. Atikol, H.S. Aybar / Desalination 184 (2005) 253–258
After the RO plant was completed and
put into operation in mid-2003 it was dis-
covered that the unit cost, C, was approxi-
mately 0.7 $/m3 in operation, which meant
that the unit cost was estimated within an
error of 2.9%.
6. Conclusion
A method of using a comparative analysis
of cost estimation was developed in the feasi-
bility of RO plants for areas where the RO
plants were never installed before. This
method depends heavily on using accurate
data about the local conditions that are to
be compared with the reference data. If the
analysis is carried out with accurate data and
information, it is possible to estimate the unit
cost of water within an error of 2.9%.
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