Reducing the environmental impacts of reverse osmosis desalination by using brackish groundwater resources

The aim of the present work is to find out whether or not, and to what extent, the environmental impacts of reverse osmosis desalination are reduced when brackish groundwater is used instead of sea water. In order to answer this question, the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is used, and two water production plants are compared. The brackish groundwater scenario is based on a plant located in Almería (southern Spain), while the sea water scenario is based on literature data. Four impact categories and two environmental indicators, one of them related to brine discharge, are included. The results show that the key life-cycle issue of brackish groundwater desalination is electricity consumption, and since this is substantially reduced with regard to using sea water, the life-cycle impacts are found to be almost 50% lower. An uncertainty analysis based on Monte-Carlo simulation shows that these environmental savings are significant for all impact categories. Potential local impacts provoked by brine discharge are also found to be lower, due to a reduced content of salts. It is concluded that, when and wherever possible, exploitation of brackish groundwater resources should be assigned priority to sea water resources as an input for reverse osmosis desalination, although it must be taken into account that groundwater, as opposed to sea water, is a limited resource.