Today three technologies are dominating the international market. These are Multi-Stage Flash (MSF), Multiple-Effect Distillation (also Multi Effect Distillation or MED) and Reverse Osmosis (RO).

Looking into a global installed capacity in 2016 of about 90 mio m³/d app. 90% of this water is produced by these three technologies.

Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) takes app 20%, Multiple-Effect Distillation (also Multi Effect Distillation or MED) app. 5% and Reverse Osmosis (RO) app 65% of this.

The number of installed plants differs very much because a single MSF plant today easily does  produce 60.000 m³/d versus a RO plant very often produces 5.000 m³/d or less. Today more then 50 different desalination technologies are classified.

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