ABSTRACT
The availability of drinking water is an issue that governs human lives and promotes civilization. Today, the demand for potable water is a major problem in many regions of the world, as only about 0.003% of the Earth’s total available water by volume is suitable and available for humankind use. Therefore, searching for a new and widely available source for producing freshwater is a critical issue and one of the choices that could be considered is the desalination of saline resources. There are some tried and tested desalination methods, such as thermal-based and pressure-driven methods; however, some disadvantages exist for these processes such as large equipment, high rate of energy consumption for thermal-based methods, and fouling problems, costly maintenance, and osmotic pressure limitation for pressure-driven methods. To resolve these drawbacks, a membrane distillation (MD) process, which is a nonisothermal membrane process for desalination, has been introduced. MD refers to a thermal-driven transport of vapor through a microporous hydrophobic membrane and shows suitable potential as a versatile and emerging desalination method with promising future prospects. The objective of this entry is a comprehensive study on the principles and application of solar-assisted MD desalination, as a novel high-tech method in the desalination domain.
