In order to address freshwater scarcity, seawater desalination technologies have been widely studied in recent years. However, the disposal of desalination brine which contains an even higher concentration of salts than seawater can potentially damage the surrounding environment. Therefore, alternative approaches aiming to recover valuable resources from desalination brine have been conducted. Three resources that can be recovered have been studied in this paper, which are minerals, freshwater and energy. The techniques to recover minerals can be divided into pressure-driven techniques, thermal-driven techniques, electro-driven techniques and other techniques. The water recovery techniques employ mainly membrane/thermal integrated hybrid processes, while the energy recovery techniques such as pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) and reverse electrodialysis (RED) utilize the salinity gradient energy (SGE) to generate energy. The valuable mineral products have also been reviewed in this paper in terms of recovery methods, performance of processes and product quality. The reviewed products are sodium salts (NaCl, NaOH, Na₂SO₄), lithium salts (LiCl, Li₂CO₃), magnesium salts (struvite, Mg(OH)₂, MgSO₄, MgO), calcium salts (CaSO₄, CaCO₃) and other minerals (U, Rb, Cs). Based on the cost and revenues of each technique, an economic comparison has been conducted along with the cost analysis of operating desalination plants.

为了解决淡水短缺，近年来对海水淡化技术进行了广泛的研究。然而，盐分浓度比海水高的淡化盐水的处理可能会破坏周围的环境。因此，已经进行了旨在从淡化盐水中回收有价值的资源的替代方法。本文研究了可回收的三种资源，分别是矿物质，淡水和能源。回收矿物的技术可以分为压力驱动技术，热驱动技术，电驱动技术和其他技术。水回收技术主要采用膜/热集成混合工艺，能量回收技术（如压力渗透（PRO）和反电渗析（RED））则利用盐度梯度能量（SGE）来产生能量。本文还就回收方法，工艺性能和产品质量对有价值的矿物产品进行了综述。审查的产品是钠盐（NaCl，NaOH，Na₂ SO ₄），锂盐（LiCl，Li ₂ CO ₃），镁盐（鸟粪石，Mg（OH）₂，MgSO ₄，MgO），钙盐（CaSO ₄，CaCO ₃）和其他矿物质（U，Rb， CS）。基于每种技术的成本和收益，已经对经济性进行了比较，同时对运行中的海水淡化厂进行了成本分析。