Numerical hydrodynamics-based design of an offshore platform to support a desalination plant and a wind turbine in Egypt

Abstract

Abstract Motivated by soial and environmental reasons, water scarcity has become a global top agenda item. Egypt is one of the countries suffering from an acute shortage of freshwater. A promising novel and efficient solution to overcome Egypt s freshwater shortage, especially in remote coastal areas far from the national grid of freshwater and electricity, is a mobile floating desalination plant (FDP) powered by offshore renewable energy. The proposed new FDP concept powered by an offshore wind turbine needs a special floating platform to provide enough buoyancy to support the weight of the desalination plant and to restrain the six degrees of freedom motions within an acceptable operational limit for a wind turbine. Based on hydrodynamics, the main objective of this study is to select the suitable offshore platform that can meet the novel FDP concept operation s requirements at a specific deployment location in Egypt. Determining the safe natural frequencies zone necessitates taking into account the new FDP concept operation constraints and the Egyptian environmental loads to select platform far from the dynamic amplifications responses in the structure. Numerical modelling results show that the cylindrical platform with a heave plate configuration demonstrated the best dynamic and static performance for Egypt.