Abstract
Water desalination is an important approach to provide fresh water around the world, although its high energy consumption, and thus high cost, call for new, efficient technology. Here, we demonstrate the novel concept of a "desalination battery", which operates by performing cycles in reverse on our previously reported mixing entropy battery. Rather than generating electricity from salinity differences, as in mixing entropy batteries, desalination batteries use an electrical energy input to extract sodium and chloride ions from seawater and to generate fresh water. The desalination battery is comprised by a Na 2-xMn 5O 10 nanorod positive electrode and Ag/AgCl negative electrode. Here, we demonstrate an energy consumption of 0.29 Wh l -1 for the removal of 25% salt using this novel desalination battery, which is promising when compared to reverse osmosis (∼ 0.2 Wh l -1), the most efficient technique presently available. © 2012 American Chemical Society.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 839-843 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Nano Letters |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 27 2012 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledged KAUST grant number(s): KUS-l1-001-12
Acknowledgements: The authors wish to thank John B. Henry for his help in preparing the manuscript. F.L.M. and M.P. acknowledge financial support by the EU and the state NRW in the framework of the HighTech.NRW program. Y.C. and C.D.W. acknowledge support from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Investigator Award (No. KUS-l1-001-12).
This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.
