A Review About Membrane-based Water Desalination

Sung Yoon Choi
North London Collegiate School Jeju

Abstract

Water desalination plant – namely a process utilizing membrane technology – is under the scientists› current spotlight since it is such a promising solution for an imminent water shortage. Amongst several membrane water desalination methods, reverse osmosis (RO) has been the most often used process due to its considerably low energy consumption. There is also an ongoing development for the membrane distillation process (MD), a highly eco-friendly process in handling the rejected brine solution regardless of the feed solution concentration.

Similarly, each different desalination plant has distinct characteristics. Because the hybrid plants make up for the disadvantage of each plant, there should be extra concentration on the hybrid plants such as reverse osmosis (RO) & nanofiltration (NF) hybridized plant and reverse osmosis (RO) & forward osmosis (FO) hybridized plant. Due to the imminent environmental issues nowadays, the future development of the hybrid system and the desalination plant overall should place the impacts of the plant on the environment as the priority.

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