A novel salt extractor technology is presented. It was developed to remove salts and produce freshwater from large volumes of low salinity water commonly encountered in mining. The salt extractor is a hybrid of electrochemical separation and humidification-dehumidification (HDH) zero liquid discharge technology. It removes salts from the water balance. A similar front-end electrochemical system was procured by NASA for testing and possible future application on the International Space Station to increase water recovery in conjunction with their onboard crystallizer. The presented work first reviews the dominant inland desalination method: reverse osmosis (RO) followed by concentrator-crystallizers. The salt extractor process is described, compared, and contrasted. Conclusions show the proposed system may provide a lower cost alternative to a combined RO and crystallizer system. Recommended next steps for development and piloting are discussed.
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