In recent years, numerous large-scale seawater desalination plants have been built in water-stressed countries to augment available water resources, and construction of new desalination plants is expected to increase in the near future. Despite major advancements in desalination technologies, seawater desalination is still more energy intensive compared to conventional technologies for the treatment of fresh water. There are also concerns about the potential environmental impacts of large-scale seawater desalination plants. Here, we review the possible reductions in energy demand by state-of-the-art seawater desalination technologies, the potential role of advanced materials and innovative technologies in improving performance, and the sustainability of desalination as a technological solution to global water shortages.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/333/6043/712.full.pdf

The Future of Seawater Desalination: Energy, Technology, and the Environment

https://www.statkraft.no/globalassets/old-contains-the-old-folder-structure/documents/forward-osmosis-in-jms_tcm9-24575.pdf

Forward osmosis: Principles, applications, and recent developments

Physico-chemical treatment techniques for wastewater laden with heavy metals

Nanotechnology is being used to enhance conventional ceramic and polymeric water treatment membrane materials through various avenues. Among the numerous concepts proposed, the most promising to date include zeolitic and catalytic nanoparticle coated ceramic membranes, hybrid inorganic–organic nanocomposite membranes, and bio-inspired membranes such as hybrid protein–polymer biomimetic membranes, aligned nanotube membranes, and isoporous block copolymer membranes. A semi-quantitative ranking system was proposed considering projected performance enhancement (over state-of-the-art analogs) and state of commercial readiness. Performance enhancement was based on water permeability, solute selectivity, and operational robustness, while commercial readiness was based on known or anticipated material costs, scalability (for large scale water treatment applications), and compatibility with existing manufacturing infrastructure. Overall, bio-inspired membranes are farthest from commercial reality, but offer the most promise for performance enhancements; however, nanocomposite membranes offering significant performance enhancements are already commercially available. Zeolitic and catalytic membranes appear reasonably far from commercial reality and offer small to moderate performance enhancements. The ranking of each membrane nanotechnology is discussed along with the key commercialization hurdles for each membrane nanotechnology.

/pdf/a-review-of-water-treatment-membrane-nanotechnologies-1np07if946.pdf

A review of water treatment membrane nanotechnologies

Nanofiltration membranes review: Recent advances and future prospects

Concentration polarization in ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis: a critical review

Effect of feed temperature on permeate flux and mass transfer coefficient in spiral-wound reverse osmosis systems☆

Emergence of thermodynamic restriction and its implications for full-scale reverse osmosis processes

Effective scale control for seawater RO operating with high feed water pH and temperature

The vast majority of commercial desalination systems utilise one of four desalination processes: reverse osmosis (RO), multi-stage flash (MSF), multiple-effect distillation (MED) and mechanical vapour compression (MVC). A small fraction of desalination systems utilise electrodialysis (ED) technology to treat low salinity brackish water. Worldwide, RO desalination systems account for close to 50% of overall capacity. However, in the arid countries of the Middle East, the majority of desalination systems utilise evaporation processes: MSF, MED and MVC. Although, the energy requirement of evaporation processes is higher than that for membrane processes, distillation desalination systems will continue to dominate Middle East markets for some time to come, due to the large base of thermal desalination units, with proven high operational reliability and the convenience of their integration with power plants (dual purpose systems). With the growing trend to privatise the desalination market in the Middle East, the proportion of desalination capacity supplied by RO will increase, due to the better economics of the RO process. In this chapter, an up-to-date review of industrial units has been performed in order to present the most common features of industrial operating units. This review includes typical design parameters, operating conditions and process performances. Moreover the developments that have taken place over the years are presented, along with examples of recent installations and their production capacities, performance parameters and locations.

Mark Wilf

Papers

Concentration polarization in ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis: a critical review

Effect of feed temperature on permeate flux and mass transfer coefficient in spiral-wound reverse osmosis systems☆

Emergence of thermodynamic restriction and its implications for full-scale reverse osmosis processes

Effective scale control for seawater RO operating with high feed water pH and temperature

Commercial Desalination Technologies