Membraneless Water Desalination System

Access to freshwater is an increasingly important national and international issue. Today, about three billion people around the world have no access to clean drinking water. To address the challenge of providing clean fresh water to meet the earths growing population new innovative solutions are required to desalinate water without using membranes. A new membraneless desalination system is being developed based on capacitive deionization technology. This Phase I program will develop and demonstrate a bench-scale reactor to desalinate water using new material enhancements and reactor design technology to minimize cost while enabling long operating lifetimes. The Phase I program will assess new materials and modifications to these materials to improve their capacitance for adsorbing ions. A variety of reactor designs will be fabricated and evaluated with ocean and brine waters to assess the desalination performance and process economics for producing potable water. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: This membraneless desalination system simplifys the operation and maintenance of the reactor by eliminating membrane fouling. The initial market for this reactor is as an onsite water deionization system that can provide potable drinking water from ocean and brine waters.