Salinity exchange between seawater/brackish water and domestic wastewater through electrodialysis for potable water

doi:10.1007/s11783-023-1616-1

Front. Environ. Sci. Eng.

2023, Vol. 17

Issue (2) : 16 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-023-1616-1

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Salinity exchange between seawater/brackish water and domestic wastewater through electrodialysis for potable water

Mourin Jarin, Zeou Dou, Haiping Gao, Yongsheng Chen(

), Xing Xie(

)

School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA

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Abstract

● Present a general concept called “salinity exchange”.

● Salts transferred from seawater to treated wastewater until completely switch.

● Process demonstrated using a laboratory-scale electrodialysis system.

● High-quality desalinated water obtained at ~1 mL/min consuming < 1 kWh/m ³ energy.

Two-thirds of the world’s population has limited access to potable water. As we continue to use up our freshwater resources, new and improved techniques for potable water production are warranted. Here, we present a general concept called “salinity exchange” that transfers salts from seawater or brackish water to treated wastewater until their salinity values approximately switch, thus producing wastewater with an increased salinity for discharge and desalinated seawater as the potable water source. We have demonstrated this process using electrodialysis. Salinity exchange has been successfully achieved between influents of different salinities under various operating conditions. Laboratory-scale salinity exchange electrodialysis (SEE) systems can produce high-quality desalinated water at ~1 mL/min with an energy consumption less than 1 kWh/m³. SEE has also been operated using real water, and the challenges of its implementation at a larger scale are evaluated.

Keywords Desalination Potable water reuse Ion-exchange membrane Salinity gradient energy Wastewater discharge

Corresponding Author(s): Yongsheng Chen,Xing Xie

About author:

Tongcan Cui and Yizhe Hou contributed equally to this work.

Issue Date: 05 September 2022

Cite this article:

Mourin Jarin,Zeou Dou,Haiping Gao, et al. Salinity exchange between seawater/brackish water and domestic wastewater through electrodialysis for potable water[J]. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng., 2023, 17(2): 16.

URL:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fese/EN/10.1007/s11783-023-1616-1
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fese/EN/Y2023/V17/I2/16

Fig.1 Operation of a salinity exchange electrodialysis (SEE) system.

Fig.2 Demonstration of the SEE process with simulated seawater (0.6 mol/L NaCl) and domestic wastewater (0.01 mol/L NaCl). (a) Voltage profile and salinity change of the two streams in a typical SEE operation and (b) energy consumption of the SEE process at different current densities. In (a) the blue curve represents the measured voltage over time with the shaded portions above and below representing the energy generation and consumption phases.

Fig.3 Performance of SEE process with different feed streams. (a) Energy consumption of the SEE process with various initial NaCl concentrations of Stream I (0.1–0.6 mol/L) and a fixed initial NaCl concentration of Stream II (0.01 mol/L), (b) energy consumption of the SEE process with a fixed initial NaCl concentration of Stream I (0.6 mol/L) and various initial NaCl concentrations of Stream II (0.01–0.03 mol/L), (c) energy consumption of conventional electrodialysis (CE) processes with both streams of 0.6 mol/L NaCl at different current densities, and (d) SEE demonstrated with treated domestic wastewater and seawater.

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