Different desalination techniques and it’s economic analysis: a review

Abstract

This review paper on different desalination technologies is brief, aiming at all the widely used desalination/distillation techniques. Desalination is not a novel concept in the modern world; it has a vast history of technological development with time. The aim of current review is to study the different desalination techniques, classifications, widely used hybrid setups, and environmentally cleaner techniques and analyze their economics and compare these techniques based on various parameters. It covers all the widely used desalination techniques like Adsorption Desalination, vapour compression distillation, multi-effect distillation, multi-stage flash distillation, electro-dialysis reversal (EDR), electro-dialysis (ED), and reverse osmosis (RO). These processes come under two categories of thermal energy-based and membrane-based desalination. Apart from these technologies, a device called solar stills is also used for distilling water. The unit cost of $\text{₹}$4.85/L is obtained when the economic analysis is considered with $\text{₹}$15,500 as the initial capital cost, for 250 working days. Various research articles and review articles are considered which painted the broader picture of different elements of the topic using which this review has summarised results for various desalination techniques along with a sustainable and clean solution of using solar still and its efficiency and economic analysis are also formulated.

KEYWORDS:

• Desalination technology
• solar still
• active still
• passive still
• economic analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their deepest gratitude to Energy Centre, MANIT, Bhopal for their unwavering support and MPCST for the financial support provided for this research project entitled ‘Impact assessment study of Solar dryer for heating and drying agricultural products such as grains, fruits and vegetables in rural areas' under the file number No./CST/Sci.Pop./2023.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).