DESALINATION: PRESENT, PAST AND FUTURE

Abstract

Desalination generally refers to removal of salt minerals and other impurities from water. Desalination
process is being used worldwide in commercial, municipal and industrial applications. Since there is only 0.3% of
freshwater sources available which is potable, new methods are being developed in order to eradicate the water
demand worldwide in which the most popular method is desalination of seawater. The major advantage of using this
technique is that the ocean is practically limitless and drought proof and seawater desalination provides a logical
solution for the sustainable, long-term management of growing water demand.The main technologies used to perform
desalination are thermal or membrane separation. The first seawater desalination plant to be built is in Texas, United
States in 1961. Since then many countries have adopted the use of desalination which includes India too.Desalinating
the water is very costly but many efforts are being made nowadays to reduce the cost. It has also been considered not a
useful way to provide potable water since these plants consumes a surfeit amount of electricity which is generated by
water. In order to reduce the use of water to generate electricity one such effort is made by Saudi Arabia in which they
introduced the utilization of solar panels which does not require electricity produced by water.This paper discusses a
review study of the desalination techniques, plants being used worldwide and technologies currently used to minimize
the utilization of water to generate electricity.