Abstract

Desalination is a technique where excess salts are removed from the sea or brackish water and converting into safe potable or
usable purified water. It is a process that takes away mineral components from saline water. Therefore, the produced water will
be most suitable for human consumption and irrigation purposes. The by-product of desalination process is brine (common salt).
Desalination methods are primarily categorized into thermal distillation processes and membrane processes. The principle of
desalination process is mainly depends on thermal, electrical, and pressure, where the thermal distillation is an oldest method
and it may be nearly thousands of years old. In thermal distillation, the water is boiled and then the evolved steam is collected
and cooled which turns into fresh water, and it leaves the dissolved salt behind in the vessel. While the membrane separation
must requires driving forces such as applied and vapor pressure, electric potential and concentration to overcome the natural
osmotic pressures, which results to force the water through membrane. It is apparent that this technology is much energy
intensive and the qualitative research is continuously evolving to improve the separation efficiency and reduce the energy
consumption. Reverse osmosis (RO) and Nanofiltration (NF) are the leading pressure driven membrane processes. Seawater
desalination has the potential to reliably produce enough fresh water to support the large populations located near the coastal
areas around the world.