A review of reverse osmosis process for seawater desalination

Abstract

The freshwater availability in many regions of the world has been a rising concern for the last few decades due to disturbing increase in population, urbanization, and industrial advancement. As water consumption is increasing year by year, the obvious solution to the freshwater shortage is to increase its supply. Desalination has been a prominent process to produce fresh water in numerous water-stressed regions to counteract the water shortage issues. Amongst the various desalination methods, the reverse osmosis method is used for generating fresh water from saline or brackish water by removing salts to make it suitable for human utilization, agriculture, and industrial purposes. In the present study, a systematic review of the seawater reverse osmosis process is presented to address the developments in the pretreatment, membrane, and post-treatment processes of reverse osmosis.