A growing number of the world’s population and industrial sectors is affected by shortage of fresh water. Population growth, global warming and ever increasing water pollution aggravate the lack of our most important resource.

There are huge volumes of water available on earth but only a small percentage of this volume is sweet. Even easy accessible sweet water must often be treated to make it useable for applications with the need of purified water like the pharmaceutical industry, beverage productions or for the electrolysis of hydrogen.

Salt water from the sea, from the ground or from industrial processes offer the opportunity to harvest purified water or to gain valuable bound substances like magnesium or lithium if the salt concentration can be increased economically.

Technologies for the separation of fresh water from salt water and for the concentration of brines will be decisive to improve the situation. The existing methods are however often expensive, use too much energy or do not supply the required water quality.