After this lesson, you will be able to define desalination and discuss its importance to society. You will also be able to describe membrane and thermal technologies used for the desalination process and the purpose of preand post-treatment systems. • Define desalination • Describe the process of solar distillation • State the main differences between membrane and thermal desalination technologies • Discuss the following primary methods of desalination: – Reverse osmosis – Electrodialysis – Multi-stage flash – Multi-effect distillation • State the purpose of pre- and posttreatment systems as they pertain to desalination technologies