The Global Rise of Zero Liquid Discharge for Wastewater Management: Drivers, Technologies, and Future Directions

Introduction: Freshwater scarcity, one of the most critical global challenges of our time, poses a major threat to economic growth, water security, and ecosystem health. The challenge of providing adequate and safe drinking water is further complicated by climate change and the pressures of economic development and industrialization. The public and industrial sectors consume substantial amounts of freshwater while producing vast quantities of wastewater. If inadequately treated, wastewater discharge into the aquatic environment causes severe pollution that adversely impacts aquatic ecosystems and public health.Recovery and recycling of wastewater has become a growing trend in the past decade due to rising water demand. Wastewater reuse not only minimizes the volume and environmental risk of discharged wastewater, but also alleviates the pressure on ecosystems resulting from freshwater withdrawal. Through reuse, wastewater is no longer considered a “pure waste” that potentially harms the environment, but rather an additional resource that can be harnessed to achieve water sustainability.Zero liquid discharge (ZLD) is an ambitious wastewater management strategy that eliminates any liquid waste leaving the plant or facility boundary, with the majority of water being recovered for reuse. ZLD obviates the risk of pollution associated with wastewater discharge and maximizes water usage efficiency, thereby striking a balance between exploitation of freshwater resources and preservation of aquatic environments. Achieving ZLD, however, is generally characterized by intensive use of energy and high cost. As a result, ZLD has long been considered not viable and has been applied only in limited cases. In recent years, greater recognition of the dual challenges of water scarcity and pollution of aquatic environments has revived global interest in ZLD. More stringent regulations, rising expenses for wastewater disposal, and increasing value of freshwater are driving ZLD to become a beneficial or even a necessary option for wastewater management. The global market for ZLD is estimated to reach an annual investment of at least $100–200 million, spreading rapidly from developed countries in North America and Europe to emerging economies such as China and India.Early ZLD systems were based on stand-alone thermal processes, where wastewater was typically evaporated in a brine concentrator followed by a brine crystallizer or an evaporation pond. The condensed distillate water in ZLD systems is collected for reuse, while the produced solids are either sent to a landfill or recovered as valuable salt byproducts. Such systems, which have been in successful operation for 40 years and are still being built, require considerable energy and capital.Reverse osmosis (RO), a membrane-based technology widely applied in desalination, has been incorporated into ZLD systems to improve energy and cost efficiencies. However, RO, although much more energy efficient than thermal evaporation, can be applied only to feedwaters with a limited salinity range. Accordingly, other salt-concentrating technologies that can treat higher salinity feedwaters, such as electrodialysis (ED), forward osmosis (FO), and membrane distillation (MD), have emerged recently as alternative ZLD technologies to further concentrate wastewater beyond RO.Although ZLD holds great promise to reduce water pollution and augment water supply, its viability is determined by a balance among the benefits associated with ZLD, energy consumption, and capital/operation costs. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the drivers and benefits that make ZLD a realistic option. Incorporating new technologies, such as emerging membrane-based processes, provides opportunities to reduce the associated energy consumption and costs and to expand the applicability of ZLD.In this critical review, we discuss the drivers, incentives, technologies, and environmental impacts of ZLD as an important strategy for wastewater management. We highlight the evolution of ZLD from thermal to membrane-based processes, with a detailed analysis of the advantages and limitations of both existing and emerging ZLD technologies. Lastly, we discuss the environmental impacts of ZLD, the prospects of ZLD technologies, and research needs for improving its feasibility and sustainability.Achieving Zero: Drivers and BenefitsWhy ZLD?Figure 1 describes the major drivers and benefits of ZLD implementation. Stricter regulations for wastewater disposal are the primary driver for ZLD. More costly noncompliance penalties along with increasing costs for wastewater disposal can outweigh the high expenses of ZLD installation. As water scarcity intensifies globally, the capability of ZLD to recover wastewater to the largest extent further enhances its prospects. Increased public environmental awareness constitutes an additional driver, as ZLD avoids negative environmental impacts of wastewater discharge and reduces the corresponding public concerns..In practice, the incentives behind ZLD implementation vary depending on its application and geographical location. Therefore, the drivers and benefits of ZLD are discussed in this section in the context of its global applications. Although ZLD has been applied in places such as the European Union, Australia, Canada, the Middle East, and Mexico, examples from the United States, China, and India are highlighted, as they represent the major ZLD markets with the largest served populations and economic power..The birth of ZLD dates back to the 1970s when the increased salinity of the Colorado River led to a regulatory mandate of ZLD for nearby power plants. In those days, obtaining approval for discharge agreements for new industrial projects required several years, whereas adoption of ZLD reduced this period to only a few months. Today, power plants remain the major domain of ZLD implementation in the U.S., where feedwaters, such as flue gas desulfurization (FGD) wastewater and cooling tower blowdown, are treated and recycled. For example, ZLD has been adopted at the Dallman Power Plant in Illinois to avoid the environmental impacts of boron from the FGD wastewater. Among the 82 ZLD plants listed in a survey by Mickley in 2008, more than 60 pants were associated with the power industry; the rest were distributed across areas such as electronics, fertilizer, mining, and chemical industries.The U.S. EPA recently completed its guidelines revising the existing regulations on wastewater discharge from thermal power plants. This new rule, which sets the first federal limits on the level of toxic metals and other harmful pollutants in wastewater discharged from power plants, considers zero discharge as the preferred option for pollutants in fly ash transport water, bottom ash transport water, and wastewater from flue gas mercury control systems. Compliance with these tighter wastewater discharge standards provides new regulatory incentives for ZLD installation in U.S. power plants.ZLD can also be used for brine management in inland desalination plants. Compared to seawater desalination, brackish water desalination requires much less energy and is particularly suitable for semiarid inland regions where seawater is inaccessible. However, the management of concentrated brines represents one of the biggest challenges for inland desalination. Traditional brine management practices, including direct discharge into surface water or publicly owned treatment works (POTW) as well as deep-well injection, can be excluded, due to potentially adverse impacts on surface water and groundwater, insufficient POTW capacity, geological and legal restrictions, and increasing disposal costs..Rapid economic development and urbanization have led to rising water consumption and rampant pollution in China. In response to this great challenge, China recently announced a new Action Plan to tackle water pollution, aiming to largely improve the quality of local water resources and ecosystems by 2020. This plan, enforced by the central government, emphasizes rigorous control of pollutant discharge and promotes water recycling and reuse, thereby providing regulatory support for ZLD installation.As in the U.S., the power industry is an important contributor to the Chinese ZLD market. Although coal-fired power plants provide more than 70% of the total electricity generated in China, 65–84% of water-intensive thermal power plants operated by the five largest state-owned companies are located in regions that suffer water scarcity or deficit. This sharp conflict between energy demand and water deficiency makes ZLD one of the few sustainable solutions at the energy-water nexus in China. Although no data have been revealed on the overall ZLD installation in Chinese power industry, a rising trend of ZLD adoption is indicated by the recent construction of the world’s first FO-based ZLD system at the Changxing coal-fired power plant in Zhejiang Province. The recent boom of the coal-to-chemicals industry in China generates another promising niche for ZLD application. The coal-to-chemicals industry, utilizing coal rather than oil or natural gas to produce raw materials for chemical production, is currently under pressure to reduce dependence on imported energy. Coal-to-chemicals plants consume a considerable amount of freshwater but are often located in water-stressed areas, such as Inner Mongolia where ample coal reserves and environmentally sensitive grassland coexist. As a consequence, ZLD is mandatory at coal-to-chemicals plants in those areas to preserve both local water resources and ecosystems. Several ZLD facilities are already installed or in the stage of design/construction at Chinese coal-to-chemicals plants, with a wide range of feedwater salinities (2,000–16,000 mg/L of total dissolved salts, TDS) and treatment capacity (110–2300 m3/hour). In addition, greater public awareness of water pollution may facilitate ZLD implementation in China. Multiple projects, including several para-xylene (PX) chemical plants and a wastewater discharge pipeline for a paper mill, have been recently suspended or canceled as a result of public protests. The growing influence of public concern may force industries to adopt ZLD as a necessary solution to gaining public acceptance..Facing a situation similar to that in China, India is taking aggressive actions to curb severe water pollution, even in the holy river Ganga. The recent three-year target set by the Indian government, known as the “Clean Ganga” project, imposes stricter regulations on wastewater discharge and moves high-polluting industries toward ZLD. In 2015, the government issued a draft policy that requires all textile plants generating more than 25 m3 of wastewater effluent per day to install ZLD facilities. As reported by Vishnu et al., 29 dyeing plants in the city of Tirupur had already implemented ZLD by 2008, which recovered not only water but also valuable salts from textile wastewater for direct reuse in the dyeing process. According to a recent technical report, the ZLD market in India was valued at $39 million in 2012 and is expected to grow continuously at a rate of 7% from 2012 to 2017. In this market, the textile, brewing and distilling, power, and petrochemical industries are the major application areas. .Early ZLD systems were typically based on a series of thermal processes (Figure 2A). In such systems, the feed wastewater undergoes a pretreatment step that reduces scaling potential, and is then concentrated sequentially by two core elements — a brine concentrator and a brine crystallizer (or an evaporation pond). The distillates generated by the brine concentrator and crystallizer units are reused as clean product water, whereas the solids produced are either stored (in evaporation ponds), further processed for landfill disposal, or reused as valuable byproducts..Brine concentrators commonly use mechanical vapor compression (MVC) for water evaporation. Although other thermal desalination technologies, such as multi effect distillation (MED) and multistage flash (MSF), have been extensively used in seawater desalination, their applications in ZLD systems have not been reported in literature. In MVC, the feedwater is preheated by heat exchangers utilizing the sensible heat from the distillate product water, and then mixed with the recirculating brine slurry at the sump of the brine concentrator. The brine slurry is conveyed to the top of the concentrator and flows down inside a bundle of heat transfer tubes. The flowing brine forms a thin film on the internal tube surface where water evaporation occurs. Calcium sulfate seeds are often added into the recirculating brine to provide preferential precipitation sites, which keep precipitating salts in suspension and prevent scale formation on the heat transfer tubes. The produced water vapor flows to the vapor compressor, which delivers the compressed vapor to the external surface of the heat transfer tubes. The superheated vapor condenses, transferring its latent heat to vaporize the falling brine slurry. The condensate travels down the heat transfer tubes and is collected as distillate that preheats the incoming feedwater before being reused.The formation of a falling thin film enhances the heat transfer rate, thereby reducing the compression ratio and required energy of the compressor. The use of energy recovery devices (e.g., heat exchangers) further decreases the energy consumption. Even so, MVC brine concentrators are still very energy-intensive and require high-grade electric energy. They typically consume 20–25 kWhe/m3 of treated feedwater, with higher values (up to 39 kWhe/m3 of feedwater) reported in the literature. As an established technology that has been applied successfully in ZLD processes for decades, MVC brine concentrators set a benchmark for energy comparison with other technologies, which guides efforts to reduce energy consumption in ZLD. Further, brine concentrators are able to reach salinity concentrations of 250 000 mg/L, with a water recovery of 90–98%, and produce high-quality product water (TDS < 10 mg/L). However, capital costs of MVC are high due to the use of expensive materials such as titanium and stainless steel, which are required to prevent corrosion by the boiling brine.The concentrated brines produced by brine concentrators are usually sent to a brine crystallizer where the remaining water is further recovered. Similar to brine concentrators, vapor compressors are employed in crystallizers to supply the heat needed for water evaporation. However, for small systems (less than 23 L/min), steam-driven crystallizers are economically favourable. Vapor compressor crystallizers are commonly operated in a forced-circulation mode. The viscous brine is pumped through submerged heat exchanger tubes under pressure, thereby preventing boiling and subsequent scaling inside the tubes. The energy consumption of crystallizers is as high as 52–66 kWhe/m3 of treated feedwater, which is nearly three times that consumed by MVC brine concentrators. This dramatic energy increase is inevitable as crystallizers are treating feed brines with much higher salinity and viscosity.Evaporation ponds can be used as competitive alternatives to brine crystallizers. Evaporation ponds utilize natural solar energy and have a lower operation cost. Nevertheless, they are only suitable when treating small volumes at locations with a high evaporation rate and inexpensive land. Their high capital cost and environmental concerns for potential leakage of hazardous waste further hinder widespread application. In a hypothetic scenario of ZLD inland desalination in Las Vegas, Nevada, the cost of land acquisition for evaporation ponds, not including the infrastructure, was estimated to be nearly three times that of the total treatment cost by brine concentrators followed by crystallizers. In addition, water evaporated from evaporation ponds cannot be collected and reused, thereby making no contribution to improving water usage efficiency..Despite their limitations, brine crystallizers or evaporation ponds are still indispensable for ZLD processes. Therefore, the focus of ZLD technology has been on reducing the volume of concentrated brine entering the brine crystallizers or evaporation ponds. RO, a well-established, pressure-driven desalination technology with excellent energy efficiency compared to thermal desalination, has been incorporated into ZLD operation to lower energy consumption (Figure 2B).Unlike thermal processes, RO does not require product water to undergo phase transition to achieve separation, thereby eliminating irreversible losses associated with evaporation and condensation in thermal processes. The energy consumed by the RO stage in seawater desalination at 50% recovery is as low as ∼2 kWhe/m3 of product water, which is significantly lower than that by brine concentrators and crystallizers (Figure 3). A smaller amount of energy is required when treating feedwater with lower salinity than seawater (e.g., brackish water RO, BWRO). In addition, the modular nature of membrane-based technologies provides further versatility in adapting RO into wastewater treatment facilities. As a result, RO can be used to preconcentrate the feedwater prior to the more energy-intensive thermal processes, increasing both energy and cost efficiencies of ZLD systems. For example, Bond et al. reported that incorporating a secondary RO to treat RO brines from inland desalination saved 58–75% of energy and 48–67% of treatment cost as compared to using only a brine concentrator followed by an evaporation pond. Notably, although the secondary RO largely reduced the volume of brine entering the brine concentrator, the capital/operation cost of the brine concentrator remained a major contributor to the total treatment cost. .However, application of RO in ZLD is constrained by two inherent limitations: membrane fouling/scaling and a limited upper level of salinity that can be treated. Membrane fouling/scaling reduces water permeability and the lifespan of RO membranes. This problem is particularly significant for ZLD, as the feedwater is concentrated more substantially than conventional SWRO or BWRO. Therefore, extensive pretreatment, such as chemical softening, pH adjustment, and ion exchange, is required in RO-incorporated ZLD systems (Figure 2B). These pretreatment methods mostly involve intensive use of chemicals, producing additional solid waste and increasing operation costs. Low-pressure membrane filtration, like ultrafiltration (UF), also performs as effective RO pretreatment. Loganathan et al. recently reported a pilot ZLD system which incorporated RO with UF pretreatment to treat basal aquifer water with high fouling/scaling potential and an average TDS of 21 300 mg/L. UF pretreatment removed most of the total suspended solids and total iron, as well as nearly 50% of oil and grease present in the feedwater, thereby enabling the subsequent RO stage to operate at high recovery rates prior to evaporation/crystallization. Altering the operating conditions of RO can further reduce membrane fouling/scaling. For example, a proprietary technology—high-efficiency RO (HERO) — achieves low fouling/scaling propensity and high water recovery by a combination of extensive pretreatment and high pH condition. The feedwater is treated by a weakly acidic cation exchange system to remove divalent ions, after which CO2 is removed by degasification and pH is raised to above 10. This high solution pH increases silica solubility and suppresses silica scaling as well as organic and biological fouling, thereby allowing RO to operate at high recoveries (e.g., > 90% for brackish water). The HERO process has been applied in multiple full-scale ZLD systems worldwide, including a recent project for a Chinese coal-to-liquids plant with a high treatment capacity of 2300 m3/h. Current RO membrane modules cannot operate at very high hydraulic pressure, which typically corresponds to a salinity of ∼70 000 mg/L of the RO exit brine. This restriction of RO systems imposes a ceiling on the salinity of water that can be treated by RO in ZLD systems. This salinity limit is much lower than that achieved by brine concentrators (i.e., up to 250 000 mg/L). Thus, a stand-alone RO system is not able to reduce the volume of concentrated brine to the same extent as brine concentrators. Accordingly, RO is usually followed by a brine concentrator in ZLD processes. Developing new technologies, which tolerate higher salinities than RO and consume less energy than brine concentrators (as highlighted in Figure 3), is of paramount importance for advancing ZLD technology..Three membrane-based processes—ED, FO, and MD—emerge as alternative ZLD technologies to brine concentrators to further concentrate the wastewater after the RO stage. The produced brine from these processes serves as a feed to the crystallizer or evaporation pond. A schematic illustration of ZLD systems incorporating these technologies is shown in Figure 4. Some of these technologies (i.e., thermolytic FO and MD) are hybrids of both thermal- and membrane-based processes. While the energy input to these processes is thermal, membranes are the core separation components of these technologies..ED applies an electric potential as the driving force to remove dissolved ions through ion exchange membranes. In contrast to RO membranes that reject all ions, ion exchange membranes selectively permit the transport of counterions but prevent the passage of co-ions. As shown in Figure 4A, cations move toward the negatively charged cathode by passing through cation-exchange membranes, whereas anions migrate in the opposite direction through anion-exchange membranes. These concurrent processes generate two streams — salt-depleted dilute and concentrated brine. In a modified form of ED, electrodialysis reversal (EDR), the polarity of the electrodes is reversed frequently to minimize fouling and scaling, thereby requiring much less pretreatment than RO. ED and EDR also have a low scaling propensity for silica-enriched feedwaters (e.g., BWRO brines), as neutral silica is not accumulated in the brine stream. Compared to RO, ED and EDR can concentrate feed waters to higher salinity (>100 000 mg/L). When concentrating brines to such high salinities, ED and EDR consume 7–15 kWhe/m3 of feedwater, which is less than that required by MVC brine concentrators. Also, the total cost for equipment and energy by ED was estimated to be lower than that of MVC. However, in contrast to the very low TDS of water produced by brine concentrators and RO, the salinity of ED/EDR effluent can be much higher (e.g., TDS > 10 000 mg/L), indicating a trade-off between the quality of the desired product water and overall energy consumption and capital cost.For ED/EDR treating concentrated feedwater in ZLD systems, low-salinity product water results in a large voltage drop, high electric resistance, low current efficiency, and dilute loss, further increasing energy consumption. Furthermore, a decrease of diluate salinity reduces the limiting current density, which increases the required membrane area and capital/operation cost. As estimated by McGovern et al., the cost of salt removal by ED is higher at lower diluate salinities. As such, a stand-alone, single-stage ED/EDR system is not suitable for reaching ZLD in most cases, since one of the benefits of ZLD is the production of usable water. A multistage configuration is a feasible solution, but it increases the capital cost.As a partial desalination process, ED/EDR has been applied in combination with RO in several ZLD systems. Such systems achieved the dual function of extending the salinity limit of RO and reducing the energy consumption relative to brine concentrators. For example, Oren et al. demonstrated a pilot RO-EDR system for brackish water desalination with a water recovery of 97–98%. In that system, EDR concentrated the RO brine to a salinity of 100 000–200 000 mg/L prior to a side-loop crystallizer and wind-aided intensified evaporation. In another pilot study, EDR effectively removed hardness to reduce the scaling potential of saline basal aquifer water, thereby improving the subsequent RO recovery without chemical addition. The EDR brine could reach a salinity of 125 000 mg/L and was further concentrated by a brine crystallizer to approach ZLD. In both cases, the EDR effluent was further desalinated by RO or partially blended with RO permeate to attain a desired product water quality..Unlike hydraulic pressure-driven RO, FO utilizes an osmotic pressure difference to drive water permeation across a semipermeable membrane. In FO, water flows from the feedwater to a concentrated draw solution with a higher osmotic pressure (Figure 4B). The produced brine is sent to a brine crystallizer or an evaporation pond, whereas the draw solutes are separated from the desalinated water to regenerate the concentrated draw solution. Since the driving force in FO is osmotic pressure, FO can treat waters with much higher salinity than RO. When using FO to concentrate feedwater beyond the salinity limit of RO, the osmotic pressure of diluted draw solution will surpass the bearable pressure limit of RO. Hence, in this case, drawing solutes that depend on RO for regeneration (e.g., NaCl and MgSO4,) will not be suitable.The development of thermolytic draw solutes, such as the ammonia–carbon dioxide (NH3/CO2), paved the way for FO-incorporated ZLD systems. The NH3/CO2 draw solution generates very high osmotic pressure-driving forces and can be regenerated by low-temperature distillation. A recent pilot study demonstrated the application of FO with NH3/CO2 draw solution to concentrate produced water from the Marcellus shale region to an average salinity of 180 000 mg/L.Because the thermolytic NH3/CO2 draw solution decomposes at a moderate temperature (approximately 60°C at atmospheric pressure), low-grade thermal energy, including industrial waste heat and geothermal energy, can be utilized to regenerate the concentrated draw solution. A recent study estimated that U.S. power plants produced 803 million GJ of waste heat at temperatures greater than 90°C in 2012. This amount of heat, if utilized to power the NH3/CO2 FO, could potentially produce a maximum of 1.9 billion m3 of water annually, which would meet the treatment demands for boiler water makeup and FGD wastewater systems of all U.S. power plants. Also, geothermal energy is abundantly available in major ZLD markets such as the U.S. and China. FO operates at low pressure, resulting in foulant layers that are less compact and more reversible than in hydraulic pressure-driven RO systems. Accordingly, FO has a much lower fouling propensity than RO, which not only reduces the operation cost for fouling control but also extends the applicability of ZLD to wastewaters with high fouling potential.The thermolytic FO process can be used as a brine concentrator after the RO stage. Compared to MVC brine concentrators, the NH3/CO2 FO can be competitive because a small volume of the more volatile draw solutes (i.e., NH3 and CO2), instead of water, is vaporized to regenerate the concentrated draw solution. Furthermore, the modularity of FO results in smaller area footprint and also renders ZLD systems more adaptable to fluctuations in the flow rate and quality of feedwater.Recently, the world’s first FO-based ZLD system was constructed at the Changxing power plant in Zhejiang Province, China. The system treats a mixture of FGD wastewater and cooling tower blowdown at 650 m3/day. The feedwater is first concentrated by RO to a concentration of ∼60 000 mg/L. The NH3/CO2 FO process is then used as a brine concentrator to further concentrate the RO brine to above 220 000 mg/L TDS. As the last step, the FO brine is fed to a crystallizer for further concentration, while a high-quality product water (TDS < 100 mg/L after polishing by a secondary RO) is produced for reuse as boiler makeup water..MD is a thermal, membrane-based desalination process, in which a partial vapor pressure difference drives water vapor across a hydrophobic, microporous membrane. In MD, the feedwater is heated and the resultant temperature difference between the hot feedwater (typically 60–90 °C) and the colder permeate side creates a vapor pressure difference to drive the water vapor flux (Figure 4C). The aqueous permeate can be in direct contact with the membrane (direct contact membrane distillation, DCMD). Alternatively, the water vapor can be collected on a condensation surface separated from the membrane, such as in air gap membrane distillation (AGMD), vacuum membrane distillation (VMD), or sweeping gas membrane distillation (SGMD).MD is more energy intensive than RO and ED/EDR, because water separation by MD requires liquid–vapor phase transition. The theoretical minimum energy of seawater desalination by single-pass DCMD with heat recovery and a feed temperature at 60 °C is 27.6 MJ/m3 of product water, which is much higher than that by RO with a typical recovery of 50% (3.8 MJ/m3 of product water). In practical use, DCMD was estimated to consume 143–162 MJ (40–45 kWht) per m3 of product water for seawater desalination, and a comparable value of 80–240 MJ (22–67 kWht)/m3 of product water was reported for AGMD. However, this thermal-based energy consumption cannot be directly compared with the energy consumption of electricity-driven technologies (RO, ED/EDR, and MVC brine concentrators), because the efficiency of electricity generation from thermal energy varies with the quality (temperature) of the thermal energy. Compared to MVC brine concentrators with well-designed energy recovery devices, efficient heat recovery (e.g., use of heat exchangers or brine recycling) is critical to improving the energy competitiveness of MD.Similar to thermolytic FO, MD is beneficial due to its ability to treat high salinity feed waters that cannot be desalinated by RO, and MD’s potential to leverage low-grade thermal energy. When low-grade energy is available, MD achieves both cost saving and a reduced carbon footprint relative to electricity-driven desalination technologies. Furthermore, MD is modular, can operate at low pressure and temperature, and has low fouling propensity. However, when volatile pollutants or surfactants are present in the feedwater (e.g., in coal-to-chemical, brewery, and shale gas industries), MD suffers from membrane wetting and the passage of volatile compounds into the permeate, which deteriorate product water quality and cause process downtime. The potential application of MD in ZLD inland desalination has been demonstrated at the bench scale. When applying MD to further concentrate a secondary RO brine (with TDS of ∼17 500 mg/L), a total water recovery of >98% was obtained for a brackish groundwater in California. Recently, a conceptual near-ZLD system incorporating MD with reverse electrodialysis (RED) was shown to achieve both water and energy production in seawater desalination. In that system, MD reduced the volume of simulated SWRO brine (1 M NaCl) by more than 80%. The produced MD brine was then mixed with seawater in a RED stack to generate electrochemical energy. To date, however, large-scale applications of MD are still hindered by its technical immaturity and low single-pass, single-module water recovery. No pilot-scale applications of MD in ZLD have been reported in the literature..Despite the main goal of ZLD to reduce water pollution and improve water sustainability, application of ZLD also results in unintended environmental impacts. One risk stems from the produced solid wastes. For example, solid wastes stored in evaporation ponds have raised concerns about their odors, potentially negative impact on wildlife, and risk of leakage. Similarly, solid wastes disposed in landfills may result in leaching of chemicals into groundwater. Accordingly, impervious liners and reliable monitoring systems are typically required to prevent potential contamination from solid wastes.As discussed earlier, ZLD consumes large amounts of energy, leading to significant emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). Some pretreatment methods, such as acidification followed by degasification, release CO2 from the feedwater into the atmosphere. For example, the application of ED in concentrating RO brine increases CO2 emission via both energy consumption and decarbonation for scaling control. A life-cycle study showed that GHG emission would increase by 50% if California water supply was switched from imported water to BWRO inland desalination. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the amount of CO2 produced by electricity generation varies depending on the fuel type. Assuming 939 g of CO2 per kWhe generated by bituminous coal, MVC brine concentrators will typically produce 19–23 kg of CO2 per m3 of treated feedwater solely from electricity usage (corresponding to energy consumption of 20–25 kWhe/m3). Incorporating technologies with higher energy efficiency, such as RO, will significantly reduce the GHG emission. In addition, emerging ZLD technologies that can utilize low-grade or renewable energy (e.g., waste heat, solar energy, geothermal energy) enable further reduction of GHG footprint of ZLD systems..ZLD implementation is growing globally as an important wastewater management strategy to reduce water pollution and augment water supply. However, high cost and intensive energy consumption will remain the main barriers to ZLD adoption. As the feedwater becomes more concentrated along the ZLD treatment train, its salinity increases and so does the minimum energy require for desalination. Therefore, the energy demand of ZLD, along with its associated costs, will still be higher than that of conventional wastewater treatment or disposal options.Future growth of the ZLD market will heavily rely on regulatory incentives that outweigh its economic disadvantages. As the severe consequences of water pollution are increasingly recognized and attract more public attention, stricter environmental regulations on wastewater discharge are expected, which will push more high-polluting industries toward ZLD. Intensified freshwater scarcity, caused by both climate change and freshwater overexploitation, will likely facilitate ZLD implementation. The prolonged drought in the Southwest U.S. (and accelerating growth of water-intensive industries (e.g., coal-fired power plants) in China exemplify a worldwide freshwater deficiency. In such cases, a water quota may be imposed to limit the total freshwater withdrawal by high water-consuming industries. In this case, ZLD may be a needed strategy to guarantee sustainable water supply.Due to the unrivaled energy efficiency of RO, expanding the salinity range of RO is of paramount importance in ZLD systems. A robust RO system with higher resistance to hydraulic pressure and fouling/scaling will effectively improve the energy efficiency and economic feasibility of ZLD. At the core of such systems are fouling mitigation technologies, such as fouling- and scaling-resistant membranes, which will reduce the operation cost through less extensive pretreatment and cleaning needs and enhance the quality of the product water for reuse. Major progress has been made to develop RO membranes with resistance to organic and biological fouling, but more remains to be done to test their performance in ZLD systems with various feedwater composition and very high concentration factors. Membranes with low propensity to inorganic scaling (e.g., gypsum and silica scaling) are particularly desirable.We have reviewed three membrane-based technologies — ED/EDR, thermolytic FO, and MD — as three emerging ZLD technologies to further concentrate the feedwater after the RO stage. However, compared to the technical maturity of RO and MVC brine concentrators, these technologies are less established. More pilot or field studies are desirable to validate their large-scale performance and viability in pursuing ZLD. Especially, their energy consumption and cost need to be further evaluated to make a direct comparison with MVC brine concentrators. For MD and thermolytic FO, their capability of harnessing low-grade energy will significantly reduce the prime energy demand, operation cost, and GHG footprint of ZLD.Resource recovery may provide an additional economic incentive for ZLD. Beneficial components in the feedwater (e.g., valuable salts, nutrients, critical metals and elements) can precipitate or be largely enriched when the feedwater is concentrated. For example, a proprietary technology has been used for sequential salt recovery while achieving ZLD. This technology involves multiple mineral precipitation and crystallization steps, producing useful salts such as gypsum-magnesium hydroxide, magnesium hydroxide, and precipitated calcium carbonate. The economic values of these byproducts (e.g., $350/ton of precipitated calcium carbonate) can partially compensate for the operation cost of ZLD. Further, the emerging ZLD technologies reviewed in this article can recover various nutrients from wastewater, and harvesting critical metals and elements from ZLD desalination systems has been recently proposed. In addition, the environmental impacts of ZLD need to be better understood. A life-cycle assessment analysis of the energy demand and GHG emission will provide additional insights into the cost-benefit balancing of ZLD. Along with advances in improving the energy and cost efficiencies of ZLD technologies, particularly by incorporating membrane-based processes, ZLD may become more feasible and sustainable in the future.