ABSTRACT
Water desalination technology is ready to solve water problems in arid and semiarid regions of the world. Current desalination technologies are fully capable of providing reliable sources of high-quality water for municipal and industrial purposes. The economics of desalination favor countries in which energy sources are less expensive. Desalination plants in that part of the world are the main source of necessary water supplies. Unlike the preceding processes, which separate water from dissolved matter, electrodialysis (ED) removes the solutes from water. ED is not yet commercially available for the desalination of seawater. Reverse osmosis (RO) desalination, another process using hydraulic pressure as its energy source, operates at ambient temperatures in contrast to distillation, which operates in the range of 50°C to 120°C. In RO, a fraction of the water content of seawater or brackish water is driven under pressure through a semipermeable membrane, generally of organic materials.
