Flow electrodes may enable large-scale sea water desalination
Across the world, millions of people cannot access fresh, clean water. With global populations rising and freshwater supplies regularly becoming overdrawn or contaminated, the ability to purify sea water is becoming increasingly important. Now, scientists from South Korea have modified a water treatment method called capacitive deionisation, with the aim of desalinising sea water on a large scale. Capacitive deionisation uses an electric field to remove cations and anions from water flowing past two oppositely placed electrodes.
The team, have developed flow electrodes from a suspended carbon material. Not only is this approach more energy efficient – it does not require a discharge step like conventional capacitive deionisation – but it can also be easily scaled-up simply by increasing the number of flow electrodes in the system.
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