A major hurdle in desalination of inland brackish waters is managing the concentrate produced. Traditional concentrate management approaches-surface or waste water discharge, evaporation pond/mechanical concentration with landfill disposal, and deep well injection-all face increased environmental, cost, and sustainability issues, and less costly and more environmentally benign concentrate management approaches are needed. Concentrate resource recovery-recovering minerals and chemicals from the desalination concentrate to reduce disposal volumes and costs-is one approach being actively pursued. While this approach has been technically and economically elusive, new innovative processing approaches may make it increasingly viable. We present an overview of inland desalination trends, concentrate recovery markets, and operational lessons learned from a large-scale, 10 million liters per day concentrate and brackish water processing plant associated with El Paso's Kay Bailey Hutchinson Plant that produces high purity industrial chemicals and increases water recovery to 99%.
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