Spray enhanced demisting (SED) Original Research Article

A new innovative and efficient system has been studied, realized and tested by SWSʹs engineers for the production of top quality distillate TDS<0.1 ppm by evaporation of seawater in both MSF and MED desalination plants. This system is based on the combined effect of scrubbing the vapor outflowing from the demisters (with a spray of accelerated droplets of distillate) and of the mechanical coalescence in a further layer of demisters. The key factors of the main scrubbing process are the highest rate of hitting droplets velocity, the dimensions of the droplets and the number of droplets to be large enough to balance the statistically low impact efficiency. The arrangement of the system is very simple and has been protected by a patent since June 2001, registered by SWS. The benefits provided by this innovation are quite remarkable bothfor the dramatical reduction of the investment cost and for the high reliability of the plants whenever the fresh water product is requested for industrial services, such as make up to HP steam generators, and process water for the chemical industry being the suitable quality ensured without any further treatment of the distillate.