Harnessing Energy Generated When Freshwater Meets Saltwater

A new hybrid technology has been created that produces unprecedented amounts of electrical power where seawater and freshwater combine at the coast.

Photograph of the concentration flow cell. Two plates clamp the cell together, which contains two narrow channels fed with either synthetic freshwater or seawater through the plastic lines. Credit: Image courtesy of Penn State College of Engineering

Penn State researchers have created a new hybrid technology that produces unprecedented amounts of electrical power where seawater and freshwater combine at the coast.

"The goal of this technology is to generate electricity from where the rivers meet the ocean," said Christopher Gorski, assistant professor in environmental engineering at Penn State. "It's based on the difference in the salt concentrations between the two water sources."

That difference in salt concentration has the potential to generate enough energy to meet up to 40 percent of global electricity demands. Though methods currently exist to capture this energy, the two most successful methods, pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) and reverse electrodialysis (RED), have thus far fallen short.

PRO, the most common system, selectively allows water to transport through a semi-permeable membrane, while rejecting salt. The osmotic pressure created from this process is then converted into energy by turning turbines.

"PRO is so far the best technology in terms of how much energy you can get out," Gorski said. "But the main problem with PRO is that the membranes that transport the water through foul, meaning that bacteria grows on them or particles get stuck on their surfaces, and they no longer transport water through them."

This occurs because the holes in the membranes are incredibly small, so they become blocked easily. In addition, PRO doesn't have the ability to withstand the necessary pressures of super-salty waters.

The second technology, RED, uses an electrochemical gradient to develop voltages across ion-exchange membranes.

"Ion-exchange membranes only allow either positively charged ions to move through them or negatively charged ions," Gorski explained. "So only the dissolved salt is going through, and not the water itself."

Here, the energy is created when chloride or sodium ions are kept from crossing ion-exchange membranes as a result of selective ion transport. Ion-exchange membranes don't require water to flow through them, so they don't foul as easily as the membranes used in PRO; however, the problem with RED is that it doesn't have the ability to produce large amounts of power.

A third technology, capacitive mixing (CapMix), is a relatively new method also being explored. CapMix is an electrode-based technology that captures energy from the voltage that develops when two identical electrodes are sequentially exposed to two different kinds of water with varying salt concentrations, such as freshwater and seawater. Like RED, the problem with CapMix is that it's not able to yield enough power to be viable.

Gorski, along with Bruce Logan, Evan Pugh Professor and the Stan and Flora Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering, and Taeyoung Kim, post-doctoral scholar in environmental engineering, may have found a solution to these problems. The researchers have combined both the RED and CapMix technologies in an electrochemical flow cell.

"By combining the two methods, they end up giving you a lot more energy," Gorski said.

The team constructed a custom-built flow cell in which two channels were separated by an anion-exchange membrane. A copper hexacyanoferrate electrode was then placed in each channel, and graphite foil was used as a current collector. The cell was then sealed using two end plates with bolts and nuts. Once built, one channel was fed with synthetic seawater, while the other channel was fed with synthetic freshwater. Periodically switching the water's flow paths allowed the cell to recharge and further produce power. From there, they examined how the cutoff voltage used for switching flow paths, external resistance and salt concentrations influenced peak and average power production.

Read more: Science Daily