Desalination of Seawater by Thermal Distillation and Electrodialysis Technologies

Freshwater is one of the scarce resources in the world. In many countries, due to freshwater shortages, searching for freshwater resources has become extremely important and desalination is known to be an essential available solution for this. In this chapter, the thermal distillation of multistage flash distillation, multieffect distillation and vapor compression and electrodialysis processes for seawater desalination are presented. The working mechanisms, important issues in design, and the recent advances of the thermal distillation and electrodialysis processes for desalination are addressed. Reverse osmosis technology is also briefly presented. A comparison of these desalination processes is given. Other important issues, such as pre- and posttreatment process, energy consumption, and environmental aspects, are discussed.