An Assessment of the Environmental Impact of Brine Disposal in Marine Environment

The ever increasing demand of water permits the need of alternative water sources for balancing the water supply and demand. Desalination has become a significant alternative water source due to growing demand of water and inadequate conventional water sources in many countries. Desalination is a process of removing excess salts and other dissolved solids from water in order to get clean water for human usage. Brine disposal is one of the major concerns of many environmental issues associated with desalination. The production and growth of marine organisms is severely effected by discharge of brine in the desalination process. These organisms are interrelated with each other so any distraction in their population has extreme impacts on all marine life in the area. In this paper various features of potential impacts of brine effluent in marine environment have been critically reviewed. A relative study on different brine disposal options in reducing these impacts is also prepared in this paper.