Review of Seawater Desalination Load Characteristics and its Application Integrated with Clean Energy

As an important adjustable power load, desalination not only contributes to clean energy consumption, but also has a very important strategic value for solving the global water shortage and realizing the sustainable development of coastal desert areas such as the Middle East and North Africa. In this paper, a variety of seawater desalination technologies and respective characteristics were introduced, including distillation, reverse osmosis, electrodialysis, and dual-purpose power and water plant. After that, the load characteristics of energy-consuming equipment for seawater desalination were analyzed. Some integration of seawater desalination technology and clean energy, including solar power desalination and wind power desalination were explained and the economic difference between desalination and the South-to-North Water Diversion Project in China were compared.