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Desalination is a technique where excess
salts are removed from the sea or brackish water and converting into
safe potable or usable purified water. It is a process that takes
away mineral components from saline water. Therefore, the produced
water will be most suitable for human consumption and irrigation
purposes. The by-product of desalination process is brine (common
salt). Desalination methods are primarily categorized into thermal
distillation processes and membrane processes. The principle of
desalination process is mainly depends on thermal, electrical, and
pressure, where the thermal distillation is an oldest method and it
may be nearly thousands of years old. In thermal distillation, the
water is boiled and then the evolved steam is collected and cooled
which turns into fresh water, and it leaves the dissolved salt
behind in the vessel. While the membrane separation must requires
driving forces such as applied and vapor pressure, electric
potential and concentration to overcome the natural osmotic
pressures, which results to force the water through membrane. It is
apparent that this technology is much energy intensive and the
qualitative research is continuously evolving to improve the
separation efficiency and reduce the energy consumption. Reverse
osmosis (RO) and Nanofiltration (NF) are the leading pressure driven
membrane processes. Seawater desalination has the potential to
reliably produce enough fresh water to support the large populations
located near the coastal areas around the world. |
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Key words: Membrane technology, Thermal
distillation process, Membrane desalination processes: Reverse
osmosis, Nanofiltration, Microfiltration. |
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