Sea water treatment by MSF-Desalination

MSF-Desalination History

MSF-Disalination plants have been built since the late 1950s. Some MSF plants
can contain from 15 to 25 stages, but are usually no larger than 15 mgd in
capacity.

MSF-Distillation plants can have either a ‘once-through’ or ‘recycled’ process.
In the ‘once-through’ design, the feed water is passed through the heater and
flash chambers just once and disposed of, while in the recycled design, the feed
water for cooling is recycled.

Each of these processes can be structured as a ‘long tube’ or ‘cross tube’ design.
In the long tube design (built at Freeport in 1961), tubing is parallel to the
concentrate flow, while in the cross tube design, tubing is perpendicular to the
concentrate flow.





Multi-Stage Flash Distillation Principle

This process involves the use of distillation through several (multi-stage) chambers.

In the MSF process, each successive stage of the plant operates at progressively
lower pressures.

The feed water is first heated under high pressure, and is led into the first ‘flash
chamber’, where the pressure is released, causing the water to boil rapidly resulting
in sudden evaporation or ‘flashing’. This ‘flashing’ of a portion of the feed continues
in each successive stage.

Because the pressure at each stage is lower than in the previous stage. The vapor
generated by the flashing is converted into fresh water by being condensed on heat exchanger tubing that run through each stage.

The tubes are cooled by the incoming cooler feed water.

Generally, only a small percentage of the feed water is converted into vapor and
condensed.


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