Study of reliability for the electricity cogeneration and seawater desalination in the Northwest of Mexico

The IMPULSA project of the Engineering Institute of UNAM, it has dedicated from the year 2005 to the study and development of new desalination technologies of seawater with renewable energies. The objective is to form a group of expert engineers and investigators in the desalination topics able to transform their scientific knowledge in engineering solutions, with a high grade of knowledge of the environment and the renewable energies. In the middle of 2007 was took the initiative in the IMPULSA project to study the nuclear desalination topic by its characteristics of zero gas emissions of greenhouse effect, competitive costs in the generation, operative experience and safety of the nuclear reactors, resulting attractive mainly for the desalination projects of seawater of great size. The Northwest of Mexico is particularly attractive as the appropriate site for one nuclear desalination plant of great size given its shortage of drink water and the quick growth of its population; as well as its level of tourist, agricultural and industrial activity. In this study was analyzed from a thermodynamic viewpoint, mentioning the economic aspect, the nuclear desalination according to the world experience; they were simulated some couplings and operation forms of nuclear reactors and desalination units, was made emphasis in one particularly. The objective of the study was to characterize several types and sizes of nuclear reactors of the last generation that could be coupled to a desalination technology as multi-stage distillation, type flash distillation or inverse osmosis. Specially and topic of this article, it is studied a case of the IRIS reactor of 335 MWe coupled to a MED station of nominal capacity of 140,000 m3/day. It is utilized for this effect the DEEP 3.1 program of the IAEA to simulate the coupling and to carry out a thermodynamic and economic preliminary evaluation, as well as the THERMOFLEX simulator to reinforce and to compare the thermodynamic part. They were costs very competitive of 0.038-0.044 $/ kWh for the production of electric energy and of 0.60 at 0.77 $/ m3 for the produced water, with a lost of power in the generation of among 28 to 43 MWe. (Author)