Optimization of material selection for evaporative desalination plants in order to achieve the highest cost-benefit ratio

The basic material selection employed for evaporative desalination plants in the first large-scale industrial installations was substantially different from material currently selected. The recent improvement of materials in the desalination environment has led to a different material selection and to an extensive adoption of more noble materials especially for seawater desalination. In particular, where carbon steel was adopted to a large extent as the material for evaporator flash chambers, solid stainless steel or copper nickel clad carbon steel is now widely used. Although this upgrading of materials contributes to an increase in the installation costs, the price of the installed gallon has drastically been reduced to an average value of US $6/gal from the former US $10/gal.