Microfluidic Desalination: A New Era Towards Sustainable Water Resources

Abstract

Water desalination is considered one of the most critical separation technologies that suffer from several drawbacks, such as the power consumption that controls the separation efficiency. Microfluidics technology provided a unique opportunity to introduce cutting edge products and to re‐visit existing technologies like desalination for evaluation, optimization, and new product introduction purposes. It is believed that the micro‐mixing and micro‐separation features in a microfluidic flow system will contribute significantly to enhance the desalination performance of known desalination techniques. Micro‐mixing and micro‐separation in a microfluidic device can eliminate the poor mixing and separation efficiency observed with the bench‐scaled systems due to the high‐precision droplet generation and microfluidic separation features. This review discusses the current state of microfluidic desalination, its operating theory, and its limitations. Additionally, the current technology is reviewed to shed some light on the feasibility of scaling up water production rates. The gap between the application of microfluidic desalination and industrial scale‐up is also described briefly.

Microfluidic Approaches in Water Quality Monitoring: An Insight and a Comprehensive Review

“…Microfluidics has contributed to advancements in diverse fields, including clinical and veterinary diagnostics, point-ofcare diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, life science research, analytical devices, industrial quality control, environmental water quality testing, agro-food testing, drug delivery, and microreaction flow chemistry [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Lab-on-chip and organ-on-chip are the most common microfluidic devices used in medical and health applications.…”

Droplets Generation using Soluble Polymeric and Surfactant Additives in a Micro-Flow System: An Experimental Approach

“…For the past several years, advancements in science and technology have exhibited a breakthrough approach in introducing and utilizing microreactors technology in academics and enterprises. Micro-sized reactors have been used in the chemical, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and even environmental diagnostic industries [1]. The innovative idea has grown fast owing to its superior efficiency to traditional macro-scale reactors [2,3,4,5].…”