Desalination of Saline Water: A Review

Abstract

Water is the most important requirement for life that is used for different purposes such as drinking, bathing, laundry and for many other various industrial applications. Clean water is the basic need of every human being. But the fresh water availability is limited now a days. Scarcity of water and untrustworthy water quality are the most important and major problems, so to attain the best water quality, desalinization of saline water is the alternate way to get the pure water and to improve the quality of life. Sea water covered almost the 94 % of the earth’s surface and support the various commercial purposes. Saline water originates from different other sources as well such as agriculture, aquacultures and many other industries including chemical, pharmaceutical industries. Saline water contains high amount of salt concentration and other contaminants, which affects the terrestrial and aquatic both lives. Desalination of saline water, is done to eradicate minerals including salts, from saline water. Thus, the treatment of saline water for the removal of contaminants and salt from the water is the important task now a days in many countries. Many different conventional methods are used for the treating of saline water, but all these methods are costly and has limited applications for limited areas. Generally saline water is treated with the chemical and physical methods. Biological methods and nanobiotechnology are also used now a days. This review highlights the different conventional and non-conventional, nanobiotechnology based and biological based methods that are used for the water desalination.