ABSTRACT
Water is an essential natural resource that impacts all aspects of life. Clean and abundant supplies of water are vital for supporting the production of food, public health, industrial and energy development, and a healthy living environment. Increasingly, however, unsustainable use of water resources, population dynamics, and climate change result in the increasing scarcity of this critical resource. It is forecast that, by 2030, global freshwater demand will grow by 30%, while freshwater supply will decrease by 40%. A feasible solution to this problem can be provided by desalination processes.
In this chapter, the two major technologies for desalination – thermal processes and membrane processes – are presented in brief. Thereafter, the main focus is on membrane desalination; the basic membranes preparation methods are outlined, along with the most common membrane modules as well as the most challenging issues involving membrane desalination plants.
