Water desalination
How it works

The primary technologies used in water desalination include:

• reverse osmosis
• ion exchange
• thermal processes like MSF (multi-stage flash distillation) and MED (multi-effect distillation)

The most popular and economical technology for desalination of seawater and brackish water is reverse osmosis. This involves a membrane-based process. The salt water is forced through a semi-permeable polyamide membrane under high pressure, ultimately separating it into product water (permeate) and concentrate.
By continuously developing of the technology over the past years, the energy consumption could be reduced to a minimum, thereby significantly lowering the costs of producing the water.

While the ion exchange process is suitable for generating fully desalinated water from mineral-deficient potable water (e.g. for industrial purposes), it cannot be used to desalinate seawater and brackish water.
Thermal processes, however, are primarily used to desalinate seawater, but they are relatively expensive and usually involve high energy consumption.

Our seawater and brackish water desalination systems operate exclusively on the principle of reverse osmosis. In special cases, for example where process water is required, reverse osmosis can be supplemented with an ion exchanger. This method even makes it possible to generate fully desalinated water from seawater.