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Seawater and Brackish Water Desalination
Publikationstyp
Book part
Date Issued
2024-12-06
Sprache
English
Author(s)
Volume
Part F3771
Start Page
179
End Page
233
Citation
In: Powerfuels : Status and Prospects / edited by Nils Bullerdiek, Ulf Neuling, Martin Kaltschmitt. - 1st ed. 2025. - Cham : Springer Nature Switzerland ; Cham : Imprint: Springer, 2025
Publisher DOI
Scopus ID
Publisher
Springer
ISSN
18653529
ISBN
978-3-031-62411-7
The increasing scarcity of water due to the world’s population growth, urbanization, industrial development, and climate change is an important topic of concern for many countries around the world. Various technical measures for improving the quantity and quality of water supply and water resources often rely on saline resources like seawater and brackish water, as these are available in abundance. The technical solutions as well as the capacities of technical desalination systems grow every year, making this water production technology increasingly reliable. In this context, various conventional thermal desalination technologies like multi-stage fraction distillation (MSF), multi-effect distillation (MED), mechanical vapor compression (MVC) as well as membrane-based methods like reverse osmosis (RO) are presented. For successful process implementation, pre- and post-treatment of the raw and desalinated water is essential. The membrane-based processes, in particular, are prone to fouling and/or scaling, while re-mineralization of the desalinated water is required. As research and development continue, new desalination techniques like membrane distillation (MD), capacitive deionization (CDI), forward osmosis (FO), the coupling of thermal and membrane desalination methods in a hybrid desalination system as well as brine management strategies are under development. Different aspects of the reducing the specific energy consumption in desalination are also discussed. Finally, insights into the current state of the desalination market and freshwater demand are given, and an outlook on future expectations related to freshwater consumption for green hydrogen production and the economic effect of providing freshwater using RO desalination for green hydrogen is presented.
Subjects
Brine management | Desalination | Desalination market | Hybrid desalination systems | Reduction of energy consumption | Water scarcity
DDC Class
333.7: Natural Resources, Energy and Environment
624: Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering