Access to sufficient quantities of water for drinking and domestic uses and also for commercial and industrial processes is critical to the health and well being. With the growth of the world population the availability of the limited quantities of fresh water decreases. From the 71% earth surface water, 97.4% is sea water and 2.6% is fresh water. With the advances of desalination technologies, seawater has become an interesting water source to cope with fresh water shortage. This process can be applied wherever a reliable source of water is needed.
Seawater is also reached in minerals which have market interest. With the large demand for salt in many geographical areas, producing salt. The most widely applied and commercially available technologies for seawater desalination can be divided into two types: membrane processes and thermal processes. Reverse osmosis (RO) and Nanofiltration (NF) are currently the leading seawater desalination solutions. The advances in key equipment (membranes, pumps, energy cost recovery device), turned the process energy efficient, resulting in a low investment cost (CAPEX) and low operational cost (OPEX). Nowadays, desalination* has become a very affordable solution to cope with freshwater shortage typically in tropical as well as of off-shore areas.