What Is Desalination?
Desalination is a process to remove all the salt and minerals from the saline water and make it drinkable. To fulfil human consumption and irrigation, the desalination of salt water (seawater especially) is necessary. Sixteen thousand operational desalination plants get located across 177 countries, which almost generate 95 million m3/day of freshwater. Desalination gets done so that we can consume freshwater, and it gets used for agricultural purposes also. Desalination companies worldwide use this process to provide everyone with fresh water, but unfortunately, some low areas still get deprived of it. Desalination of seawater consumes high energy. It is quite expensive compared to water recycling, water conservation, groundwater, or surface water. Depending on the process type, water salinity, and plant size energy cost in desalination processes varies considerably. Floating Water Desalination Plants with reverse osmosis membranes are used substantially for the procedure for desalination.
Methods Used for Desalination
There are many different methods for the desalination process; each method has its advantages and disadvantages. Some of these methods are:
- Solar Distillation:
In this process, solar energy gets used to evaporate water and collect purified water. This process gets done in two ways.
a) solar energy is converted into electrical energy and completes the process of desalination.
b) Thermal powered desalination; this process gets done by utilizing the solar energy in heat form to clean and purify the saltwater.
- Vacuum Distillation:
In this desalination method, the process gets done on different boiling points under reduced pressure to save energy.
- Multi-Stage Flash Distillation:
It is a method used for desalination, which distils salt water by a portion of water flash through a steam heat source and many evaporators at external pressure.
- Multiple-Effect Distillation:
In this process, pipes get used through which incoming water gets heated to create steam. This process gets worked through multiple steps, known as 'effects.' The same process gets used for the next batch. A nearby power plant gets used to make steam to heat the seawater to increase efficiency. Among methods powered by heat, multiple-effect distillation is the most effective one.
- Vapor-Compression Distillation:
A mechanical compressor or a jet stream gets used to distil saltwater, which compresses the vapor above the liquid. For the heat needed for the rest of the seawater's evaporation, the compressed vapor gets used. If kept at a small scale, vapor-compression distillation is more cost-effective, as this system only requires power.
- Reverse Osmosis:
In this distillation process, water gets purified using partially permeable membranes to separate impurities like ions, unwanted molecules, and larger particles from seawater to make it drinkable. This reverse osmosis plant membrane uses much less energy as compared to the thermal desalination process. Floating Water Desalination Plants with reverse osmosis get used to complete the desalination process. Floating water plants are environmentally-friendly.
- Forward Osmosis:
A semi membrane gets used to effect the separation of water from dissolved solutes in this desalination of saltwater.
- Membrane Distillation:
A temperature difference across a membrane gets used to evaporate vapor from a brine solution and condense pure condensate on the colder side.
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