What is it about?
Freeze desalination is an alternative way to produce freshwater from seawater and brines. Instead of evaporating water or forcing it through membranes, it removes salt by forming ice crystals, which naturally exclude most dissolved salts. This review examines recent advances in freeze desalination technologies, including improvements in ice formation, salt separation, energy efficiency, and integration with renewable energy and waste-cold sources such as liquefied natural gas (LNG). The study analyses scientific and engineering developments published over the last decade and compares laboratory, pilot-scale, and integrated systems. It also discusses the challenges that still limit large-scale deployment, including ice purification, energy consumption, operational reliability, and economic feasibility. The review provides a comprehensive assessment of where freeze desalination works best and what is needed to move the technology closer to commercial implementation.
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Why is it important?
Freshwater scarcity is becoming one of the most pressing global challenges, while conventional desalination technologies often require substantial energy and generate concentrated brines. Freeze desalination offers a fundamentally different approach that operates at low temperatures and may be particularly attractive for treating hypersaline brines, utilizing renewable energy, recovering industrial waste cold, and supplying water in remote or off-grid locations. This review is important because it goes beyond describing individual technologies. It connects laboratory-scale mechanisms, pilot-scale evidence, energy performance, and scale-up challenges into a single framework for decision-making. By identifying where freeze desalination is technically credible and where important barriers remain, the study helps researchers, engineers, and policymakers better evaluate its future role in sustainable water–energy systems.
Perspectives
As researchers working at the intersection of water treatment, energy systems, and sustainability, we believe that freeze desalination deserves renewed attention. While it is often presented as a low-energy desalination technology, the reality is more nuanced. Its performance depends strongly on system design, ice purification, energy integration, and operating conditions. One of the most rewarding aspects of preparing this review was bringing together evidence from modeling, experiments, pilot demonstrations, and techno-economic studies to create a clearer picture of the field. Our analysis suggests that freeze desalination should not be viewed as a universal replacement for reverse osmosis or thermal desalination. Instead, its greatest potential lies in niche applications where renewable energy, waste cold, or hypersaline streams create unique opportunities. We hope this review helps guide future research toward long-duration pilot testing, better energy accounting, and practical deployment strategies that can transform promising laboratory results into real-world solutions for sustainable freshwater production.
Professor Rosenberg J Romero
Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Morelos
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Freeze Desalination Technologies for Sustainable Water Treatment: Advances in Crystallization, Brine Management, Energy Integration, and Scale-Up, Applied Sciences, August 2026, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/app16157801.
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