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

Comparison of fouling behavior in forward osmosis (FO) and reverse osmosis (RO)

Energy is consumed at every stage of the cycle of water supply, treatment, use and disposal. The intensity of energy consumption (kW h/m 3 ) depends upon the specific technologies applied at each stage of the water cycle. For some technologies, the intensity may be relatively low, whereas the intensity of other technologies is substantially greater. This report surveys the available literature on energy intensity for water use in the municipal and agricultural sectors and separates the process into several stages. Water supply, water treatment, residential end use, wastewater treatment, and agriculture end use are considered. Representative values of the energy consumed per unit water are given for a broad range of processes. Water extraction and pumping from ground and surface sources is considered. The energy intensity of treatment required for different types of water source is found to vary widely between the extremes of relatively fresh surface waters, which use energy mainly in pumping, and seawater, which requires desalination. Energy usage for different methods of irrigation including pressurized as well as surface irrigation is studied. The energy intensity of residential end use is very high relative to other parts of the water supply cycle. Processes such as heating water, washing clothes and dishes, and cooking are briefly studied within the water end-use stage. Hot water usage is responsible for making end use the most energy intensive stage of the water cycle. Hot water use in different buildings is briefly reviewed. Wastewater treated with various processes is considered, and the energy intensity is found to be highest when advanced wastewater treatment methods are applied. Energy consumption in the agricultural sector, which is principally related to irrigation pumping, is generally of lower energy intensity than for the municipal treatment or end use.

Energy requirements for water production, treatment, end use, reclamation, and disposal

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00540531/document

Energetic and economic investigation of Organic Rankine Cycle applications

Membrane distillation (MD) is a promising separation technology that can help reducing the worldwide water-energy stress in a sustainable way MD uses low-grade thermal energy to drive desalination, to remove non-volatile contaminants or to recover other components In MD, the vapor from an aqueous solution crosses a hydrophobic membrane and then it condensates at the other side of the membrane, resulting in a high-quality distillate Recent advances in MD have demonstrated the viability of this technology for different water purification applications This article presents a critical review of MD that focuses on applications for sustainable water production and on issues that must be addressed to improve the performance of MD desalination systems To achieve sustainable desalination, different MD systems powered by solar, geothermal, and waste energy have been designed and evaluated, as well as hybrid systems that allow accomplishing zero liquid discharge To achieve improved desalination, new membranes, membrane modules and MD configurations have been proposed in the last years Membrane fouling and scaling has been found to be one of the main issues that limits MD at large-scale Research gaps are highlighted and areas for further research – in terms of sustainability and to improve the performance of MD systems– are proposed

Membrane distillation: perspectives for sustainable and improved desalination.

Life cycle assessment of MSF, MED and RO desalination technologies

This paper analyzes the potential role of desalination as a sustainable source of fresh water provision, starting from the present framework and considering the trends in the desalination technology. Several aspects have been reviewed: the state of the art of the technology, focusing the attention on the most widespread desalination technologies; the importance of desalination in the different regions of the World and the future trends; the economic costs of desalted water and the uses derived from those costs, the environmental charges provoked by desalination and their possible corrective measures to be undertaken; future improvements expected for desalination technology, and their economic consequences. Particular attention is focused to environmental issues and integration of desalination with other productive processes, particularly with energy production systems as a mean of dramatically reduce the environmental loads provoked by desalination systems.

Desalination as a sustainable source of fresh water provision

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Life cycle assessment of MSF, MED and RO desalination technologies

Desalination as a sustainable source of fresh water provision