Desalination

By 2050, 40% of the world’s population is projected to live under severe water stress, including almost the entire population of the Middle East and South Asia, as well as significant parts of China and North Africa.

The global demand for water is expected to increase even further due to population growth, increase in per capita water demand, expanded irrigation schemes and economic development. Options to increase water availability include (among others) the desalination of seawater and brackish groundwater as well as reuse and recycling of wastewater. 

The use of seawater and brackish water desalination to produce fresh water is likely to grow further in the near future. Projections indicate that cost-effective use of desalination technologies can increase the global clean water supply by about 20% between 2020 and 2030.

In the UN World Water Development report of 2021: Valuing water desalination is presented as “one of the technological options that can provide an additional source of freshwater for irrigation, especially in water-stressed coastal areas, underlying how thanks to decreasing costs, the supply of desalinated water for agriculture is most likely to be cost-effective in a tightly controlled environment, using agricultural practices with the most efficient water use, crops with high productivity, and renewable energies”.

Desalination areas of interest

At IHE Delft, our research and capacity development activities aim to improve the sustainability and affordability of desalination technology for developing countries and countries in transition. We aim to achieve this with our research in the following areas:

• Desalination of sea water, brackish water and treated wastewater effluent
• Membrane technology (microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, reverse osmosis)
• Pre-treatment optimization and troubleshooting
• Environmental impact assessment
• Fouling indices for assessment, monitoring and control of fouling
• Scaling monitoring and control
• Water quality monitoring and method development
• Predicting desalination system operation
• Biological stability of drinking water
• Reducing chemical dosing in desalination systems
• Natural organic matter characterization
• Development of early warning tools/indicators to assess fouling in RO systems
• Removal of micropollutants and primary substances

IHE Delft desalination experts won the 2017 global innovation award of the prestigious Desalination and Water Reuse World Congress. This bi-annual congress is organized by the International Desalination Association (IDA). IHE Delft won this award for the paper 'A New Method of Assessing Bacterial Growth in SWRO Systems: Method Development and Applications'. The award is given to an innovative desalination or water reuse technology that has reached the commercial stage but is not yet considered to be widely adopted.

• EU – INDIA-H2O - Research project on ‘Bio-memetic and phyto-technologies designed for low-cost purification and recycling of water’
• EU-Intelwatt  - Research project on Intelligent water treatment for water preservation combined with simultaneous energy production and material recovery in energy intensive industries. 
• EU-MAR2PROTECT - Preventing groundwater contamination related to global and climate change through a holistic approach based on managed aquifer recharge (MAR). The project, which will start soon, focuses on controlling and monitoring water quality before infiltration in dunes and drinking water production from surface water.
• Assessment and control of biofouling in seawater desalination plants - Project on development of new tools to control and monitor biological fouling. This project aims at further developing a bacterial growth potential (BGP) method for assessing biofouling in seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) and attempting to correlate this method with RO operation.
• Water energy food environment nexus in brackish water desalination in Jordan - The project aims to study the water-energy-food-environment nexus at the brackish water reverse osmosis plant at the Hashemite University and use it as a role model for other plants in Jordan.
• Water quality monitoring, fouling assessment and mitigation measures - Project to study water quality variations and their effects during water treatment at Andijk and Heemskerk. A particular focus is natural organic matter characterization and particulate fouling assessment in membrane systems.
• Microbial Desalination for Low Energy Drinking Water (MIDES) - Project completed in 2020 to research an innovative and low-energy technology for drinking water production, using microbial desalination cells technology as stand-alone or pre-treatment step for reverse osmosis (RO).
• Scaling control in brackish water reverse osmosis - Project on water recovery and energy optimization in brackish water reverse osmosis plants.
• Desalination and Wastewater Reuse in the Middle East (SCARCE) - Research and training project involving the Ministry of Water in Jordan, the University of Jordan, and Al-Balqa’ Applied University on desalination of seawater and brackish ground water as well as wastewater re-use. Completed in 2021.

Capacity building in WASH and Climate Smart Agriculture education and research in Palestine - This project, funded by the Orange Knowledge Programme, aims to ‎strengthen education and research in water, specifically efficient water management for ‎climate smart agriculture (CSA), and improved access to water and sanitation (WASH) through ‎good governance and sound technical management. Palestinian ‎universities will have their curricula in CSA and WASH updated to match the labour market ‎requirements, the research applied, demand driven and translated into national policies.

Solar Desalination for Sustainable Brackish Water Management in Jordan for Agriculture and Drinking Water (SoDeS) - This project, funded by the Orange Knowledge Programme, aims to develop a sound concept of energy production from clean and environmentally friendly sources, including solar energy, to drive desalination plants. Taking into account not only public information campaigns and promotion of solar energy technology, but also training and technical education through training programs and workshops.