Out of the four membrane filtration technologies (ultrafiltration, microfiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis), reverse osmosis is the one that concentrates solely by eliminating water, which places it in the same category as thermal evaporation.
This process has proved to be very interesting in terms of energy consumption and investments, yet the concentration capacity is still limited.
Reverse osmosis can complement heat evaporation to optimise the process from an energy standpoint and in some cases improves the capacity of the concentration line.