Critical Review of Desalination Concentrate Management, Treatment and Beneficial Use

Abstract

Desalination of seawater, brackish water, and reclaimed water is increasingly utilized worldwide to augment and diversify fresh water sources. The lack of economically and ecologically feasible concentrate management options, however, is a major barrier to widespread implementation of desalination, in particular at inland sites. This paper critically reviews strategies and technologies for concentrate management, including disposal, treatment, and beneficial use. Development of energy-efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally benign concentrate management systems is critical if desalination is to become a major part of a sustainable water future. This paper examines the limitations and advantages of a range of concentrate management tools, including emerging and novel technologies for minimization of concentrate volume, enhancement of water recovery, removal of organic contaminants, and recovery of valuable products and energy.

Energy efficiency of membrane distillation up to high salinity: Evaluating critical system size and optimal membrane thickness

“…Membrane distillation (MD) is a thermally driven, scalable desalination process [11,12] that has been identified as a candidate technology for modular desalination of high-salinity brines [13,14,15]. Since MD can operate at low feed temperatures, it has been successfully coupled with a range of renewable energy sources [16,17,18,19].…”

Chemical Composition of Saline Sources as Suppliers of Minerals for Ruminants

“…Out of the total solid residues obtained, 79.03% corresponded to NaCl, 8.67% of MgCl 2 , 4.99% of CaSO 4 , 4.72% of MgSO 4 and 2.45% of CaCl 2 , having potential for industrial use and/or for animal feeding. Xu et al (2013) reported that several chemical compounds could be obtained from the desalination waste for different purposes.…”

“…The dumping of desalination waste directly in the soil may promote environmental implications (Amorim et al, 2004a;Xu et al, 2013), it is important, then, to search for alternative methods to waste disposal. On the other hand, these saline sources may provide ingredients and raw materials for animal supplementation and contribute to their destination.…”

Modeling brine discharge dispersion from two adjacent desalination outfalls in coastal waters

“…Evaporation, crystallization as well as more innovative technologies emerging in recent years have been increasingly used to reduce the volume of the Reverse Osmosis (RO) concentrate before disposal, better still to achieve zero liquid discharge for some inland cases (latest reviews can be found in [7,8]). At the same time, for ocean discharge of concentrate, while alternatives such as discharge through existing wastewater treatment plant outfall and co-disposal with cooling water of existing coastal power plant have seen increased applications, most large scale coastal desalination plants nowadays still dispose of huge volumes of concentrate via purpose-built long outfall pipes that can stretch far away from the coast [2,[9][10][11][12][13][14].…”