Technical and Environmental Opportunities for Freeze Desalination

Freeze desalination (FD) is an efficient technology to produce fresh water through formation of ice crystals in the seawater or brackish water and subsequent separation of salt (or other components) from the pure ice fraction. FD development has been focused primarily on two areas, the purification of ice portion, and a significant increase in desalination productivity, allowing a considerable decrease in energy consumption. However, only laboratory and pilot-scale FD studies have been conducted, and actually, the possible industrial FD applications have been limited due to the predominance of thermal- and membrane-based desalination technologies. Whereby, the focus of this review is on the general principles, advantages and disadvantages of FD, and in addition, this article discusses the environmental impact of FD and other desalination systems in brine-loaded media discharged into aquatic environment.