Disadvantages Of Reverse Osmosis Desalination

Water is everywhere around us, it 's essential and life is impossible without it. However, not all available water is drinking water. It 's only 3% of the available water is potable water. That means we need to focus on how we can get drinking water by purifying the sea water into fresh water.

To get fresh water from sea water, we use a process called desalination. Desalination has several methods and reverse osmosis is one of them. So, we are going to focus on Reverse Osmosis Desalination. This method has developed by years, and its cost has decreased comparing to the past. Many countries use it and UAE is one of them. This method has two branches and they are: desalination of sea water and desalination of brackish water. So, to

• The purpose of reverse osmosis desalination.

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of this method?

• What are the impacts of reverse osmosis on environment

• Where this method is implemented in the UAE?

3.0 Discussion

3.1 How reverse osmosis desalination works?

Reverse osmosis makes desalination work. We defined osmosis as a naturally occurring process in which a liquid such as water spontaneously passes through a membrane. The membrane allows some molecules like water through, but other molecules like salt are unable to easily pass through the membrane structure. It moves from a more concentrated solution to a less concentrated solution. So, in osmosis fresh water (High concentration of water molecules) moves to salt water (Low concentration of water molecules), as a result we get higher amount of salt water. When the direction of liquid flow is reversed, it 's called reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis is actually a series of filters where water is pushed through under pressure. This system uses a semipermeable membrane, which designed to catch salt molecules. Here, water molecules move from low concentration to high concentration (Wilkinson,G. 2010).

3.1 The purpose of osmosis