A global outlook of the desalination industry and state-of-the-art technologies for brine valorisation

Desalination is increasingly recognized not only as a solution to water scarcity but also as a potential source of valuable resources through brine valorisation. This review presents a comprehensive assessment of the global desalination landscape, focusing on the feasibility of resource recovery within circular economy frameworks. Using the DesalData database, the study maps the distribution and capacity of desalination plants, revealing the dominance of seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) and the substantial volume of brine produced globally. A quantitative analysis shows that SWRO brine could meet or exceed current production levels for several commodities. Over 30 technologies are evaluated across membrane-based, thermal, and electrochemical categories, with varying maturity and salinity tolerance. While some, such as thermal brine concentrators and crystallisers, are commercially deployed, others like bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BMED), membrane distillation crystallisation (MDC), and forward osmosis (FO) remain at pilot or lab-scale. The review highlights the potential to recover freshwater, salts, critical raw materials, chemicals, and energy, in brine valorisation and identifies more specifically the key challenges to recover such resources of the analysed technologies including energy consumption, material durability, and economic viability. Industrial case studies demonstrate that large-scale brine mining currently focuses on water and NaCl recovery, while multi-resource recovery remains limited to pilot-scale implementations. Overall, brine valorisation emerges as a promising strategy to transform desalination from a waste-generating process into a circular and resource-efficient solution, though further technological development and scale-up are essential to realize its full potential. • Global assessment of desalination capacity and brine production. • Brine valorisation as an opportunity for the recovery of minerals, water and energy. • Quantification of mineral recovery potential from seawater desalination brine. • Evaluation of 30+ technologies across salinity and TRL used in MLD/ZLD scenarios. • Identification of key obstacles in energy use, scalability and material performance.