Cruise Hotel Water Demand, RO / Evaporator Capacity, Shore Makeup, Storage Autonomy, Energy & Cost

Cruise Ship Freshwater Production & Desalination Cost Tool

Estimate whether onboard freshwater production can cover cruise-hotel demand, how much water must be bunkered or supplied ashore, and what the resulting energy and operating cost looks like. Advanced mode dispatches multiple desalination units by marginal production cost, tests N-1 capacity and shows how long stored potable water can bridge a production outage.

Data type
Currency
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Need guest/crew/service demand streams, multiple RO or evaporator trains, tank autonomy and N-1 resilience? Click Advanced above.Advanced separates demand, production capacity, least-cost dispatch, shore-water availability and stored-water resilience instead of treating nameplate desalination capacity as guaranteed supply.

Fast Freshwater Production Screen

Exactly 10 primary inputs. Onboard plant production is capped at derated effective capacity; any remaining demand is assigned to shore/bunkered water.

Passengers + crew for this demand screen.
litres/person/day. Use a vessel-specific total hotel basis.
m³/day for services not represented in the per-person allowance.
m³/day.
% of rated daily capacity available for planning.
kWh/m³ of onboard freshwater produced.
Selected currency/kWh.
Selected currency/m³ produced.
Selected currency/m³ delivered onboard.

Shipwide Water & Economic Basis

% added to calculated base daily demand.
Selected currency/kWh.
Selected currency/m³ delivered onboard.
m³/day. Enter 0 if no shore/bunkered makeup is available.
m³ total storage used in this screen.
% of entered tank capacity.
% of tank capacity retained as planning reserve.
% effective production capacity above margin-adjusted demand.
kgCO₂/kWh for the selected onboard electricity basis.
Selected currency/tCO₂. Enter 0 to disable.

Freshwater Demand Streams

Daily stream demand = units × litres/unit/day × usage factor. Stream names are excluded from Tool Data.

Demand streamUnits / peopleLitres / unit / dayUsage factor %

Desalination / Freshwater Production Units

Effective capacity = rated capacity × availability. Daily dispatch uses the lowest modeled marginal production cost first. Unit names are excluded from Tool Data.

Production unitTechnologyRated m³/dayAvailability %Electric SEC kWh/m³Variable O&M / m³Heat / utility opportunity cost / m³

Freshwater-System Readiness

Production / operating-cost screen only: this tool does not determine whether produced or bunkered water is potable, nor does it size disinfection, remineralization, storage, piping, cross-connection control, sampling, Legionella controls or other public-health systems. Production performance also varies with seawater temperature, salinity, membrane condition, pressure, waste-heat availability and plant configuration. Use approved equipment data and the vessel's potable-water management requirements for design and operation.
Freshwater and public-health context: CDC's current Vessel Sanitation Program guidance includes 2025 Environmental Public Health Standards and Construction Standards for cruise ships. The standards address potable-water production, storage, distribution and protection against contamination, including protection of permeate and distillate lines directed toward the potable-water system. WHO's Guide to Ship Sanitation remains a global reference for shipboard public-health controls. For energy context, Alfa Laval states that its marine multi-effect plate desalination plants typically use about 1.3 to 3.0 kWh/m³ of electrical energy, while its current material notes that seawater RO energy use depends strongly on energy recovery and plant configuration. CDC Vessel Sanitation Guidance · WHO Guide to Ship Sanitation · Alfa Laval Freshwater Generation
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