The Conference will explore the urgent and increasing need for better provision of clean water of drinking quality on a worldwide basis. The lack of clean water is the direct cause of millions of deaths every year in poorer countries, while in most affluent countries the demand for such water is continuously increasing. Thus, the development of new means to produce drinking water is a high priority for international organisations, governments and research agencies.

Sustainable development of effective desalination processes can make a major contribution to meeting the demand for drinking water, and membrane desalination is the most promising of the new approaches. However, the technology raises a number of energy efficiency as well as environmental and sustainability issues which will also be covered in this conference.

Professor Nidal Hilal the director of CWATER and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Desalination said: “The interest in desalination technologies is growing due to the fact that there is insufficient fresh water to meet the daily drinking and sanitation needs of all the earth’s inhabitants. Worldwide desalinated water supply must triple by 2020 to meet the demands of a growing human population. It is a fact now that desalination is a technology of choice, as the global water desalination market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 9.5% over the next 10 years.

Professor Hilal is an expert in this field and he and his team have produced over 300 scientific papers and 5 major books on the subject and for the first time five scientific papers on desalination from CWATER, submitted from  the College of Engineering, were rated in the top 25 most downloaded articles in the last 90 days (at the end of June) further reiterating the pioneering contribution by Swansea University towards innovation of new technologies.

Professor Hilal added: “We are delighted to know that our work is cited and downloaded by other researchers and industrialists in the desalination community. This truly reflects Swansea University’s internationally leading research in water and desalination technologies. We hope our findings play significant role in providing clean water to humanity as 780 million – approximately one in nine on the planet – lack access to an improved water source.”

Professor Hilal has also recently co-authored a Book titled “The Boron Separation Processes” to be published in January 2015 by Elsevier. The book discusses the Boron issue which is one of the target areas to be solved in desalination plants where membrane technologies are employed to produce water for irrigation. Students, scientists and engineers will be able to see, for the first time, in one reference work the state of the art in the rapidly growing area of boron separation processes.   

•  The five papers authored by Professor Hilal and his team and published by Elsevier were:

5- A review on membrane fabrication: Structure, properties and performance relationship (DOI: 10.1016/j.desal.2013.06.016)

7- Membrane distillation: A comprehensive review (DOI: 10.1016/j.desal.2011.08.027)

8- Application of Capacitive Deionisation in water desalination: A review (DOI: 10.1016/j.desal.2014.02.031)

19- A review on the applicability of integrated/hybrid membrane processes in water treatment and desalination plants (DOI: 10.1016/j.desal.2014.03.008)

21- Polymeric membranes incorporated with metal/metal oxide nanoparticles: A comprehensive review (DOI: 10.1016/j.desal.2010.11.033)

• “The Boron Separation Processes” co-authored by Nidal Hilal, Marek Bryjak and Nalan Kabay is published by Elsevier. ISBN 13: 9780444634542.  
• For more information about Swansea University’s CWATER go to http://www.swansea.ac.uk/cwater   

• For more information about the 2nd International Conference on Desalination using Membrane Technology go to http://www.desalinationusingmembrane.com