There are already technologies beyond reverse osmosis in large scale industrial use (and I'm not referring to brine or similar high energy approaches) Siemens

There are already technologies beyond reverse osmosis in large scale industrial use (and I'm not referring to brine or similar high energy approaches) Siemens has built a desalination plant in Singapore that works similar to dialysis (mimicking kidneys) and is using a fraction of the energy required for a comparable RO solutions (http://www.desalination.biz/news/print.asp?id=6008 http://www.desalination.biz/news/print.asp?id=6008). The key issue with all membrane / filter based desalination solutions still is the lifetime / service requirements of the filters.