Report on Water Technology
A GIWEH review of desalination and membrane treatment technologies, their costs and where each one fits. Available to download as a PDF.
Freshwater is about 2.5 per cent of the water on the planet, and less than one per cent of it is within reach. With population growth and a changing climate pushing a quarter of the world's people into water scarcity, attention has turned to the oceans. This GIWEH report sets out what the technology can and cannot do.
What the report covers
Two families of desalination are compared. Thermal evaporation, which dominates the Middle East, covers multi-stage flash, multi-effect distillation and vapour compression. Membrane separation, which dominates everywhere else, covers reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, ultrafiltration, microfiltration and electrodialysis. The report follows a cost curve that fell four-fold in twenty years, sets out the energy demand of each route, and weighs where each one makes sense.