Brine management methods: Recent innovations and current status

Reject brine is the product from desalination processes containing high salinity, high temperature, and at many times, dissolved chemicals. With the growing demand of water, increasing amounts of brine are being produced from the desalination plants leading to significant adverse impacts on the environment. It is necessary therefore to effectively manage desalination reject brine in order to ensure more efficient disposal and reuse. This review gives a general idea on the recent and currently devised brine management processes, which have been employed to reduce the environmental issues related to concentrate dumping. Those management approaches consist of minimization techniques that can be divided into membrane-based, thermal-based and emerging technologies. Moreover, this critical review gives an overview of the various applications of brine and some sustainability aspects of the reject brine disposal and reuse. The most obvious sustainable improvements in reject brine management are based on minimization techniques or reuse that can be achieved through the recovery of valuable materials such as salts, metals, and chemicals. Many new research works in this field have been introduced and scientists have continued to devise reject brine reuse strategies and minimization technologies leading to very low quantities of residual brine.