The purpose of this study was to determine the comparative environmental impacts of coupled seawater desalination and water reclamation using a novel hybrid system that consist of an osmotically driven membrane process and established membrane desalination technologies. A comparative life cycle assessment methodology was used to differentiate between a novel hybrid process consisting of forward...

[1] Many regions of the world are facing formidable freshwater scarcity. Although there is substantial scope for economizing on the consumption of water without affecting its service level, the main response to water scarcity has been to increase the supply. To a large extent, this is done by transporting water from places where it is abundant to places where it is scarce. At a smaller scale an...

Microbial desalination cells (MDCs) are an emerging concept for simultaneous wastewater treatment and water desalination. This work presents a mathematical model to simulate dynamic behavior of MDCs for the first time through evaluating multiple factors such as organic supply, salt loading, and current generation. Ordinary differential equations were applied to describe the substrate as well as...

The objective of this paper is to introduce models to determine an effective, feasible, and cost-efficient strategy for Saudi Arabia’s water supply system to meet its projected demand in 2025. This paper uses cost minimizing and production maximizing approaches to build the models. The water management system is divided into three processes–desalination, distribution, and wastewater treatment. ...

We demonstrate and analyze a novel desalination method which works by electrophoretically replacing sodium and chloride in feed salt water with a pair of ions, calcium and carbonate, that react and precipitate out. The resulting calcium carbonate precipitate is benign to health, and can be filtered or settled out, yielding low ionic strength product water. The ion exchange and precipitation emp...

Published researches about the pretreatment of exit wastewater from desalination units are rare. Nowadays, lake of potable water, development of industries and population growth, extend desalination units. Although desalination units have been grown up, but exit brine stream is usually drained into the sea ecosystem [1-4]. Moreover, annually a large quantity of concentrated brine is discharged ...

Disposal of concentrate from brackish water desalination plants by deep well injection into oil and gas fields is an attractive option in Texas. Underpressured depleted oil and gas reservoirs cover large areas of the state. Six areas were selected from across Texas for detailed analysis. These sites were characterized by abundant brackish groundwater, a projected shortage of freshwater, deplete...

Lower critical solution temperature (LCST) phase transition of glycol ether (GE)-water mixtures induces an abrupt change in osmotic pressure driven by a mild temperature change. The temperature-controlled osmotic change was applied for the forward osmosis (FO) desalination. Among three GEs evaluated, di(ethylene glycol) n-hexyl ether (DEH) was selected as a potential FO draw solute. A DEH-water...

This study examines the feasibility of indirect solar desalination in oil producing countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It relies on value engineering (VE) and costbenefit with sensitivity analyses to identify optimal coupling configurations of desalination and solar energy technologies. A comparative return on investment was assessed as a function of water costs for va...