Advances in desalination technology and its environmental and economic assessment

The potential utility of seawater desalination technologies (such as thermal distillation, membrane desalination, and solar steam generation) has been recognized with the growing shortage of freshwater resources. A better knowledge of such techniques thus needs to be built to efficiently achieve freshwater production. This paper reviews the desalination technologies with respect to the working principle, environmental risks, merits/demerits, and economic benefits. Our discussion has been extended further to propose the strategies needed to overcome the shortcomings of the major solar desalination technologies at the present. An outlook on the future direction of this research field is also presented. This paper is thus expected to set the valuable reference for the production of freshwater based on the desalination techniques.