RED applied to desalination

Abstract

RED performance can be improved by using highly concentrated brines in the desalination process. Desalination brines have high chemical potentials because of ions that remain after water is eliminated from seawater. To date, there are only a few studies on using brines as the concentrated solution in RED systems. This chapter shows the power enhancement of RED using brines discharged from two different membrane-based desalination processes: (1) reverse osmosis (RO), the most popular method in the desalination market, and (2) forward osmosis (FO), a novel concept without energy-intensive high-pressure processes. The effects of desalination brines on RED performance were evaluated both experimentally and numerically.