Research Team Developing New Low Energy Use Desalination Process

A team of scientists from China and the U.S. are currently working on a new way to desalinate water without using the traditional methods such as reverse osmosis and electro-dialysis, which require large amounts of energy to perform. The research team is also attempting to use wastewater to generate electricity.

The team is using modified microbial fuel cells to desalinate wastewater, but installing the fuel cells into a device designed to use existing bacteria in the water. The process also produces an electrical current, while turning the wastewater into clean water.

Bruce Logan, Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering at Penn State, said this about the project: “The big selling point is that it currently takes a lot of electricity to desalinate water and using the microbial desalination cells, we could actually desalinate water and produce electricity while removing organic material from wastewater.”

As of now the researcher team says the process is not yet practical on a commercial sale basis, as it took 200 milliliters of wastewater to produce 3 milliliters of clean water, however they are continuing to develop the device.

 “Our main intent was to show that using bacteria we can produce sufficient current to do this. However, it took 200 milliliters of an artificial wastewater — acetic acid in water — to desalinate 3 milliliters of salty water. This is not a practical system yet as it is not optimized, but it is proof of concept.”

The research team says they will continue to explore this process further, as it could be a new alternative to other desalination process which currently consume huge amounts of energy.

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