Advances in desalination technology and its environmental and economic assessment

TL;DR: Eco-friendly polycaprolactone membranes were fabricated via electrospinning, with 12 wt% concentration yielding uniform nanofibers with 328 nm diameter and 0.45 μm pore diameter, suitable for hydrophobic membrane distillation with high flux and salt rejection.

TL;DR: In this paper, the technical features, energy consumption, environmental considerations, and potential of renewable energy use in driving the main desalination processes are reviewed and analyzed in order to compare the current and projected costs of water produced from conventional and renewable energy-driven processes.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a comprehensive review and assessment of desalination technologies such as thermal which includes multi-stage flash (MSF) and multiple effect distillation (MED), membrane reverse osmosis (RO), and hybrid (MS F/MED-RO).

Abstract: Solar steam generation has been proven to be one of the most efficient approaches for harvesting solar energy for diverse applications such as distillation, desalination, and production of freshwater. Here, the synthesis of monolithic carbon aerogels by facile carbonization of conjugated microporous polymer nanotubes as efficient solar steam generators is reported. The monolithic carbon‐aerogel networks consist of randomly aggregated hollow‐carbon‐nanotubes (HCNTs) with 100–250 nm in diameter and a length of up to several micrometers to form a hierarchically nanoporous network structure. Treatment of the HCNTs aerogels with an ammonium peroxydisulfate/sulfuric acid solution endows their superhydrophilic wettability which is beneficial for rapid transportation of water molecules. In combination with their abundant porosity (92%) with open channel structure, low apparent density (57 mg cm−3), high specific surface area (826 m2 g−1), low thermal conductivity (0.192 W m−1 K−1), and broad light absorption (99%), an exceptionally high conversion efficiency of 86.8% is achieved under 1 sun irradiation, showing great potential as an efficient photothermal material for solar steam generation. The findings may provide a new opportunity for tailored design and creation of new carbon‐aerogels‐based photothermal materials with adjustable structure, tunable porosity, simple fabrication process, and high solar energy conversion efficiency for solar steam generation.

TL;DR: A comprehensive review of the membrane development is presented in this paper, which summarizes the current state-of-the-art SWRO membranes, looking at the array of fabrication methods used thus far, and putting into perspective critical strategies to realize the next generation TFC membranes that can address the future demands of SWRO and deliver a more competitive desalination process.