One large desalination plant vs. several smaller plants to supply water to an area Original Research Article

Traditionally, the way to reduce costs per m3 of water has been to build large plants. Using the economy of scale and further enhanced by the fact that centrifugal pumps and recovery turbines have higher efficiency the larger they are, this has been an important factor for reduction of the costs of water produced. With the availability of new types of energy recovery devices this is no longer always true. The topic is discussed under the spotlight of economy, reliability and environmental impact, where also the question of feedwater, open intake or seawater wells, plays an important role.