Hock Chee Lu

I have a comment on your statement 'Since seawater contains a alarming amount of suspended solids and salt (35 ppt)'. Not sure why you use the adjective 'alarming'. It is what it is and would increase with time until saturation limits for the various salts are reached. Not sure what units you mean by 'ppt' - this could be taken as 'parts per trillion'.... 'standard sea water has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/L, ~ 0.6 M)'. The saturation limit for NaCl is about 350 g/L.

Ion exchange is not mentioned in your list. Standard filtration simply removes suspended solids. Are you talking about removing the dissolved salts from sea water? Suspended solids can be partially removed by settling. All your aforementioned processes are expensive - a cost benefit analysis is needed and there are many of these online - in Saudi Arabia they use RO near Dahran/Dammam.

Dear Dr. Hock Chee Lu ,

I suggest you to have a look at the following, interesting notes/papers:

-Seawater desalination by CTCN

Available at: https://www.ctc-n.org/technologies/seawater-desalination

-Sea water by GEA

Available at: https://www.gea.com/en/environment/water/sea-water.jsp

-Study of the performances of different configurations for seawater desalination with a solar membrane distillation

Nader Frikha, Samira ben abdallah, Bechir Chaouachi, Gabsi Slimane

Conference: TCHES – International Chemical Engineering Congress At: Djerba-Tunisia (2013)

Available on RG at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322807728_Study_of_the_performances_of_different_configurations_for_seawater_desalination_with_a_solar_membrane_distillation

-Seawater Desalination-Costs and Technology Trends

Nikolay Voutchkov

In book: Encyclopedia of Membrane Science and Technology (2013), DOI: 10.1002/9781118522318.emst115

Available on RG at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278309462_Seawater_Desalination-Costs_and_Technology_Trends

-Desalination Guidelines Development for Drinking Water: Background

By Joseph A. Cotruvo

Rolling Revision of the WHO Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality (2004)

Available at: https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutdesalination.pdf

-Desalination of Seawater

AWWA – American Water Works Association - MANUAL M61 – First Edition

Available at: https://www.awwa.org/portals/0/files/publications/documents/m61lookinside.pdf

-Desalination and Advance WaterTreatment Economics and Financing

By Corrado Sommariva

In Book: ISBN 0-86689-069-6 (2009)

Available at: https://www.google.it/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwih1rLw44LuAhVJ8uAKHWcgA3wQFjAIegQICxAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ilf.com%2Fen-ng%2Fnews%2Fpublications%2F%3Fp1%3D2%26download-id%3D11133&usg=AOvVaw1y6oecU6syE9lLt9meVjFK

-Experimental investigation of multistage electrodialysis for seawater desalination

G.J. Doornbusch, M. Tedesco, J.W. Post, Z. Borneman, K. Nijmeijer

Desalination, Vol. 464, Pages 105-114 (2019)

Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001191641930222X

Enjoy reading and my best regards, Pierluigi Traverso.