Development of Flow-Pattern Manipulator for Membraneless Seawater Desalination

By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in places with severe water scarcity and two-thirds of the global population will encounter some degree of water stress. If warming continues at the current pace, by 2030 half of the world’s population will experience severe water stress (Runte 2016). The demands are strong; the restraints, on the other hand, come from (1) high capital investment for equipment and for operation, (2) environment consideration on the discharge of brine water, and the most importantly (3) energy inefficient for the current technology under operation. These low energy efficiencies not only add up costs, but also accelerate the exhaustion of limited fossil fuels that are available. The development of innovative and capable technologies to (i) relieve the severe water stress people have already experienced, and (ii) minimize the impact of energy-inefficient processes that deteriorate the already-fragile environment, will, therefore, be extremely desirable. In response to the need for Technical Transfer Opportunities requested by the Department of Energy (DoE), a microfluidic flow manipulator, a passive means barely consuming additional energy, consisting of simple yet reliable structures that can be seamlessly implemented into the membraneless desalination device (US patent 20140183046 A1) is proposed. This innovative approach will readily double its current salt rejection rate of 25% to 50% (50% recovery) by the end of Phase I, and realize a portable system capable of generating 5-10 gallons per day with > 99% salt rejection rate in three years.