Conventional seawater desalination technologies and fossil energy operations produce large volumes of hypersaline brines requiring proper management. Zero liquid discharge desalination processes can offer an economic and environmentally responsible method to manage these complex streams. The objective of this study was to assess preliminary economics for a novel Joule-heated desalination process design. Aspen Plus (R) was employed to model two scenarios, one with a chemical precipitation pretreatment using sodium sulfate, sodium hydroxide and calcium carbonate (scenario A) and the other using CO2 instead of calcium carbonate as precipitating agent in the pretreatment stage (scenario B). The conditions for the water desalination step were 22.1 MPa and 430 degrees C. Internal Joule-heating provides the energy in the supercritical water separation step. The preliminary economic model projects a cost of $4.29 per m(3) feed ($0.68/bbl feed) for scenario A and $7.10 per m3 feed ($1.13/bbl feed) for scenario B.