New research helps eliminate dead zones in desalination technology and beyond-

SEE FULL PAPER ATTACHED

Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are leading the charge toward wide-scale implementation of water desalination by developing an efficient new electrode for use in battery-based desalination. Credit: Fred Zwicky

Engineers have found a way to eliminate the fluid flow "dead zones" that plague the types of electrodes used for battery-based seawater desalination. The new technique uses a physics-based tapered flow channel design within electrodes that moves fluids quickly and efficiently, potentially requiring less energy than reverse osmosis techniques currently require.

Technical hurdles have prevented the wide-scale implementation of desalination technology. The most-used method, reverse osmosis, pushes water through a membrane that filters out the salt and is costly and energy-intensive. By contrast, the battery method uses electricity to draw charged salt ions out of the water. Still, it also requires energy to help push the water through electrodes that contain tiny, nonuniform pore spaces.

"Traditional electrodes still require energy to pump fluids through because they do not contain any inherently structured flow channels," said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign mechanical science and engineering professor Kyle Smith, who led the study. "However, by creating channels within the electrodes, the technique could require less energy to push the water through and eventually become more efficient than what is commonly used in the reverse-osmosis process."

Media

Taxonomy

• Membranes
• Desalination
• Membrane Technology
• Solar Desalination
• Sustainable Desalination
• Desalination