Variable speed turbo couplings used for speed control of pumps for seawater desalination plants

Innovation in desalination generally has the objective of reducing cost and since energy consumption is a major contributor to costs, the emphasis in the technological fields, namely distillation and reverse osmosis, has been focused on methods to improve efficiency or to use low grade energy effectively. It will be shown, that not only operational benefits, but also accountable power savings can be achieved by controlling the speed of the mandatory required pumps - varying flow and pressure rather destroying energy by means of the widely used throttle control valves. This paper discusses one of the engineering disciplines - the speed-controlled drive.