Research on Reverse Osmosis Membrane Materials for Seawater Desalination

97.5% of the water on Earth is salty, around one percent of that is brackish groundwater, and fresh water is becoming more and more precious. Mature desalination technologies as reverse osmosis, multi-stage flash, multi-effect distillation as well as electrodialysis are introduced in this paper. Of these, such reverse osmosis membranes as cellulose acetate membrane, polyamide membrane and nanomaterials enhanced membrane are discussed. In addition, several seawater desalination processes are presented, and the working manners of three other novel desalination technologies are illustrated. After all, none of the new technologies seem simple and cheap enough to offer much benefit to people, and the appropriate method should be chose according to different nations.