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Water Desalination: Most Available Alternative over the Earth for Covering the Freshwater Shortage

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Resources and Sustainable Utilization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2024 | Viewed by 4156

Special Issue Editors

1. Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Aswan University, Aswan 81542, Egypt
2. Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Islamic University, Madinah 42351, Saudi Arabia
Interests: environmental engineering; water quality; water and wastewater treatment; desalination; solid waste management
Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, Qassim University, Buraydah 51452, Saudi Arabia
Interests: water and wastewater treatment and recycling; desalination; water quality management; groundwater pollution, and remediation; solid waste management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The freshwater shortage is an alarming problem in many regions of the world, especially the arid regions. Freshwater demand has risen due to increases in urbanization and the population worldwide. The fresh surface water is very limited as it is around 0.3% of earth water. The groundwater withdrawal and glaciers melting may provide some resources for fresh water, but they are not available everywhere. Seawater desalination may introduce the best solution for providing freshwater as access to saltwater is available for most countries. The process is usually costly and extensively consumes energy resources. The challenge is to find new technologies providing a high enough quantity of water with low-cost and eco-friendly applications. For example, using direct solar energy for the desalination of seawater may introduce the best low-cost and clean option; however, the main disadvantage of this process is the low productivity. Thus, intensive research work is needed to solve all these difficulties and introduce an updated process, which will provide the world with the magic solution for the water shortage. The scope of this special issue, therefore, is to review the current desalination processes, identify the advantages and disadvantages of these processes, and explore new technologies to reduce the current drawbacks. Both experimental and theoretical papers are welcome. Topics of potential relevance to this special issue include but are not limited to:

  • Thermal desalination processes;
  • Desalination processes by membrane technologies;
  • Desalination technology combinations.
  • Renewable energy sources that can provide good energy options for desalination;
  • Hybrid desalination technology.
  • Solar still desalination process.

We look forward to receiving your papers.

Prof. Dr. Abdelkader T. Ahmed
Dr. Md. Shafiquzzmaan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • desalination
  • seawater
  • thermal processes
  • membrane technologies
  • renewable energy sources
  • solar still

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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20 pages, 9639 KiB  
Article
A Novel Approach for the Biological Desalination of Major Anions in Seawater Using Three Microalgal Species: A Kinetic Study
by Madeha O. I. Ghobashy, Omar Bahattab, Aishah Alatawi, Meshari M. Aljohani and Mohamed M. I. Helal
Sustainability 2022, 14(12), 7018; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14127018 - 08 Jun 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1971
Abstract
The global water shortage alert has been upgraded to a higher risk level. Consequently, a sustainable approach for ecofriendly, energy efficient water desalination is required for agricultural and municipal water reuse. In this study, an energy-efficient biological desalination process was used to treat [...] Read more.
The global water shortage alert has been upgraded to a higher risk level. Consequently, a sustainable approach for ecofriendly, energy efficient water desalination is required for agricultural and municipal water reuse. In this study, an energy-efficient biological desalination process was used to treat chloride anions, which are the most abundant anion salt in seawater. Three algal species were studied: Scenedismus arcuatusa (S. arcuatusa), Chlorella vulgaris (C. vulgaris), and Spirulina maxima (Sp. maxima), under different operating conditions (saline concentrations, contact time, high light intensity, and CO2 supply), and two kinetic models were used. It was identified that under a high light intensity and CO2 supply, S. arcuatusa enhanced chloride removal from 32.42 to 48.93%; the daily bioaccumulation capacity (Qe), according to the kinetic models, was enhanced from 124 to 210 mg/g/day; and the net biomass production was enhanced from 0.02 to 0.740 g/L. The EDX analysis proved that salt bioaccumulation may be attributed to the replacement of Ca2+ and Mg2+ with Na+ and K+ through algal cells. The study’s findings provide promising data that can be used in the search for novel energy-efficient alternative ecofriendly desalination technologies based on algae biological systems with biomass byproducts that can be reused in a variety of ways. Full article
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32 pages, 15322 KiB  
Review
Computational Fluid Dynamic Applications for Solar Stills Efficiency Assessment: A Review
by Saleem S. AlSaleem, Ebrahim Al-Qadami, Hussein Zein Korany, Md. Shafiquzzaman, Husnain Haider, Amimul Ahsan, Mohammad Alresheedi, Abdullah AlGhafis and Abdulaziz AlHarbi
Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 10700; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141710700 - 28 Aug 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1529
Abstract
Even though water is a renewable resource, the majority of the available water on the planet is unfit for human use. Moreover, the drinkable water demand is ever-increasing as a result of rising population, urbanization, and life standards, which makes the needs for [...] Read more.
Even though water is a renewable resource, the majority of the available water on the planet is unfit for human use. Moreover, the drinkable water demand is ever-increasing as a result of rising population, urbanization, and life standards, which makes the needs for sustainable, economic, and environment-friendly treatment alternatives of utmost importance. Seawater desalination using solar stills has been proposed as a promising alternative that may help to solve drinkable water scarcity issues. In the past decades, many studies have been conducted to assess the performance of different types of solar stills aiming to enhance their productivity. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) numerical simulation is one of the approaches that have been used recently to assess the performance of solar stills. The present study performed a systematic review and bibliometric analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of CFD numerical simulation uses as a tool to assess solar stills performance. A total of 486 publications were collected initially from different databases for the period between 2012 and 2022. The collected publications were filtered through several stages reaching 43 publications of highest significance. The collected data were analyzed descriptively, and the bibliometric mapping was presented. Furthermore, the basics and principles of CFD numerical simulation of solar stills efficiency were described and discussed. Later, the previous studies were analyzed to understand the algorithms, methods, and still types used. Finally, future research scopes and conclusions were stated. The presented knowledge in this study can help to provide a deep overview of using CFD in studying the efficiency of solar stills and inspire researchers to identify future research ways and gaps. Full article
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