Desalination is the process of removing dissolved solids–primarily salts–from water.
There are various methods to separate the salts from the water to render it useful for drinking purposes. The two most common and generally proven large-scale methods are distillation processes and membrane-based processes. Distillation processes consist of applying heat to the source water to create vapor and then capturing the condensed vapor to produce pure water. This approach may be more cost-competitive in cases where the salt-content in the source water is greater than 10,000 mg/l. Also,it is more economically attractive if operating in conjunction with steam
power generation because the steam released from the power generation plant can be
advantageously used as input into the desalination plant. Distillation technologies account for approximately one-half of the world’s installed desalination capacity, and it is more commonly used in areas of the world with large supplies of fossil fuel
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