This document provides guidance on, the evaluation and comparison of wastewater softening and desalination processes for industrial wastewater reclamation and reuse with specific consideration for the following six: 1) chemical precipitation; 2) ion exchange; 3) nanofiltration (NF); 4) reverse osmosis (RO); 5) electrodialysis (ED) and 6) electrodeionization (EDI). This document provides guidance on the characterisation of both influent and effluent quality (e.g. hardness, alkalinity, etc.) and the effects of these processes on those constituents. The purpose of softening and desalination is only for the reuse usages that have requirements for hardness and salinity, such as cooling circulating water, boiler water, production process water, and cleaning water.

This document includes the following sub-processes of wastewater softening and desalination processes:

a) wastewater softening processes based on chemical precipitation, ion exchange and NF, which aim to remove hardness ions, such as Mg²⁺ and Ca²⁺;

b) desalination processes based on ion exchange, RO, ED, EDI and NF, which aim to remove the most of total dissolved solids (TDS).

This document is applicable to:

a) industrial saline wastewater, which has been pre-treated to remove most of the organic matters if necessary;

b) the selection or design of wastewater softening and desalination processes for reuse of wastewater from industries.