Recent Desalinations of Brine: A Review

Although around 2/3 of Earth surface is covered with water, its shortage remains a great threat in almost every sector of human society. Incorrect consumption patterns, increasing world population and consequently water consumption and pollution depletes the scarce source of existing drinking water at a dangerous rate especially in developing countries such as Iran. Therefore, there is an ever-increasing demand to use alternative sources of water at rivers and seas. Recently, there has been a considerable progress in this area. In this article, a review is made on a variety of desalination methods available in the industry including: Vapor Compression Distillation (VCD), Solar Evaporation (SE), Freeze Desalination (FD), Multistage Flash Distillation (MSF), Multiple Effect Distillation (MED), Reverse Osmosis (RO), Electro-Dialysis (ED), and application of Carbon Nanotube Membranes (CNM). Considering the climatic properties, cost analysis and efficiency of these methods, ED and RO were found to be most appropriate methods for middle-eastern countries such as Iran.

Keywords:

Water Desalination , Reverse Osmosis , Electro-Dialysis , Multistage Flash Distillation (MSF) , Multiple Effect Distillation (MED)