Abstract
In the next decade, about 70% of the world’s population is likely to face water scarcity. This is rapidly becoming critical in coastal areas, arid/semi-arid regions and island countries. This chapter presents an overview of the desalination concept and describes the basic aspects of desalination system design, including desalination techniques, energy demand and supply, and environmental issues pertinent to desalination. The availability of vast seawater and brackish water resources and evolving desalination techniques and system design appear to provide ample opportunities to address global water scarcity. Furthermore, the rapidly changing energy conservation and renewable energy technologies will also support the emergence of environmentally sustainable small-scale and decentralized desalination infrastructure networks for densely populated urban areas, as well as rural and remote areas. However, there remains an urgent need to implement desalination plant permitting and monitoring systems to balance the cost-effectiveness of evolving technologies with environmental sustainability.
Keywords
- Desalination
- Water and energy nexus
- Renewable energy
- Environmental management
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Natural organic matter
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Younos, T., Lee, J. (2020). Desalination: Concept and System Components. In: Saji, V.S., Meroufel, A.A., Sorour, A.A. (eds) Corrosion and Fouling Control in Desalination Industry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34284-5_1
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