Life-cycle assessment of membrane-based desalination technologies and alternatives

Global freshwater scarcity is projected to affect almost half of the world's population by 2025. Desalination has become a reliable option to provide fresh water, especially with respect to climate change and its direct impact on water resources. The desalination technology transforms water from some of the nontraditional water sources such as brackish water or seawater into potable water. The sustainability and environmental impacts of different desalination technologies are a concern due to high energy and resource consumption. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach is being utilized to study the environmental sustainability of different technologies. This chapter provides a global overview of research publications on LCA concerning salt and brackish water desalination technologies and their alternatives. The global warming potential-related information of membrane, thermal, and emerging technologies have been discussed. Moreover, the life-cycle inventories published in the literature were compared to obtain conclusive results. The correlation between carbon footprint of the world's top 11 desalinated water producers and desalination capacity of those countries published in papers. Furthermore, a brief state of the art of techno-economic assessments is presented in this chapter to provide holistic conclusions.