Seawater desalination technologies

The distribution of the total water available in various places on the earth is delineated in this paper. This paper discusses various desalination technologies like membrane technology and thermal technology. Membrane technology includes Reverse Osmosis and Nanofiltration, Electrodialysis and Electrodialysis Reversal, whereas thermal technology includes Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) Distillation, Multi-Effect Distillation (MED) Vapour Compression Distillation (VCD). The advantages and disadvantages of all these processes are tabulated. The distribution of various desalination plants worldwide, with their capacities, is given in this paper. The various characteristics, like quality of raw water used, the quality of product water, the capital costs per installed gallon per day and the cost of water produced by using these methods, are also tabulated in this paper. Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has installed a large number of desalination plants of various capacities at different places in India using both thermal and membrane technologies.