An integrated approach to enhance the desalination process: coupling reverse osmosis process with microbial desalination cells in the UAE

Abstract The growing need for better sources of fresh water has led to water desalination to become a dominant technology in the water industry, especially in arid countries like the UAE. Across the globe, reverse osmosis (RO) has become the key method used to desalinate seawater. Due to the high energy requirements of RO desalination, the need to reduce the energy load has become a pertinent area of research. Microbial desalination cells (MDCs) are an emergent technology that show great promise when integrated into the RO desalination process. Studies have shown that a significant proportion of the energy utilized in RO desalination could be eliminated by using MDCs as a pretreatment process. In this study, the integration of various MDC types into the pretreatment process for RO desalination were compared and explored. Existing MDC integration setups were briefly explained. Research was split into possible configurations for the integration. This includes optimization of key parameters such as anodic inoculum, feed inlet ratios and accompanying pretreatment processes. The limitations and challenges faced in the integration were investigated and the required future studies aligned with subject was deliberated.