Abstract
Water constitutes one of the basic necessities of life. Around 71% of the Earth is covered by water, however, not all of it is readily available as fresh water for daily consumption. Fresh water scarcity is a chronic issue which poses a threat to all living things on Earth. Seawater, as a natural resource abundantly available all around the world, is a potential water source to fulfil the increasing water demand. Climate-independent seawater desalination has been touted as a crucial alternative to provide fresh water. While the membrane-based desalination process continues to dominate the global desalination market, the currently employed membrane fabrication materials and processes inevitably bring adverse impacts to the environment. This review aims to elucidate and provide a comprehensive outlook of the recent efforts based on greener approaches used for desalination membrane fabrication, which paves the way towards achieving sustainable and eco-friendly processes. Membrane fabrication using green chemistry effectively minimizes the generation of hazardous compounds during membrane preparation. The future trends and recommendations which could potentially be beneficial for researchers in this field are also highlighted.
Highlights
As the demand for fresh water surges due to population and economic growth, the development of agricultural activities, industrialization and a decrease in available fresh water supply, desalination has become a promising technology to produce fresh water [1]
The traditional membrane preparation methods usually involve the use of toxic solvents which carry the danger of eco-toxicity, replacing the traditional solvents with some non-toxic or less toxic solvents is highly desirable
It is not merely a suggestion and a need to find greener alternatives to traditional solvents, as the European Union has started to restrict the use of toxic organic solvents in 2020
Summary
As the demand for fresh water surges due to population and economic growth, the development of agricultural activities, industrialization and a decrease in available fresh water supply, desalination has become a promising technology to produce fresh water [1]. Desalination converts water with a high salt concentration, such as saline water, brine water, and brackish water, into fresh water. The majority of the installed desalination plants are located in the Middle East where seawater is plentiful and fresh water is scarce [3]. While there are multiple ways to operate these desalination technologies, the systems being commercially employed are usually multi-stage flash (MSF), reverse osmosis (RO), and multi-effect distillation (MED) due to their high desalination efficiency [7,8]. The preparation materials used and brine waste produced throughout the processes could impose adverse environmental pollution, making the whole process unsustainable and not environmentally friendly
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