Abstract: As the global shortage of fresh water resources is increasingly serious, the study of seawater desalination technology is strengthened all over the world. Compared with other desalination technologies, the reverse osmosis seawater desalination has rapidly developed because of the development of pressure energy recovery devices. In this paper, the performance was analyzed from several aspects among some pressure energy recovery devices, such as structure, mechanism, energy recovery efficiency, maintenance and life.Resultsshow that the isobaric devices have much better performance than the centrifugal ones. Furthermore, the key technologies are monopolized by foreign countries. Therefore, designing new types of pressure energy recovery devices with superior performance independently is crucial for the sustainable development of our seawater desalination industry.