Brackish and seawater pretreatment processes: A systematic literature review

Abstract

The water cycle is greatly affected by climate change, leading to prolonged droughts that have a significant impact on communities' economic and social aspects. To mitigate these effects, desalination of sea and brackish water is a promising solution. However, the success of this approach depends on the efficiency of pre-treatment processes to ensure optimal water quality. This study aims to identify best practices for pretreatment processes of marine and brackish waters. This will contribute to make an inventory of a wide range of pretreatment categories, their associated techniques and the expected performances according to the literature, creating a reference for designing pretreatment processes. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, the steps for the elaboration of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) were followed.A list of 526 scientific articles collected on this topic was used as input to the review process. The obtained results led to an examination of the different techniques used for the pretreatment and their performances, which allowed us to have a clear idea on the techniques to be integrated and area for further research that we would choose depending on their performances and the characteristics of the water to be pretreated.