Nuclear desalination for the petrochemical complex of the Natuna project

On the basis of environmental considerations, a high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR) was proposed as the heat source for the Natuna project for CO2 conversion. To convert CO2 to useful products, a large amount of high quality water is required for the chemical processes, boilers and other purposes. One LNG production train (maximum of six trains) would produce 0.4 x 109 SCF/d of saleable gas and 1.4 x 109 SCF/d of CO2 (in the case of the Exxon process). This CO2 gas would then be converted to automobile fuel (methane, methanol), which requires a large amount of water. Natural gas from an off- shore gas field is piped to the petrochemical complex on Natuna Island (about 228 km). Natuna is a small island that, apart from sea water, does not have much available water. The desalination process is considered to be the only solution to the water demand problems of the petrochemical complex. A nuclear desalination system was designed to provide high quality water for this complex. Of the commercial scale desalination processes, multi-stage flash, multi-effect distillation and reverse osmosis and hybrids are considered to be good candidates for the coupling scheme for producing high quality water. The availability of waste heat from the HTGR and an exothermic chemical reaction was also evaluated. It seems that an additional small to medium sized nuclear power plant may be required to produce water for the petrochemical complex of the Natuna project