Voltea B.V., Wasbeekerlaan 24, 2171 AE Sassenheim, The Netherlands.
Environ Sci Technol. 2013 May 7;47(9):4904-10. doi: 10.1021/es3053202. Epub 2013 Apr 5.
Membrane capacitive deionization (MCDI) is a water desalination technology based on applying a cell voltage between two oppositely placed porous carbon electrodes. In front of each electrode, an ion-exchange membrane is positioned, and between them, a spacer is situated, which transports the water to be desalinated. In this work, we demonstrate for the first time that up to 83% of the energy used for charging the electrodes during desalination can be recovered in the regeneration step. This can be achieved by charging and discharging the electrodes in a controlled manner by using constant current conditions. By implementing energy recovery as an integral part of the MCDI operation, the overall energy consumption can be as low as 0.26 (kW·h)/m(3) of produced water to reduce the salinity by 10 mM, which means that MCDI is more energy efficient for treatment of brackish water than reverse osmosis. Nevertheless, the measured energy consumption is much higher than the thermodynamically calculated values for desalinating the water, and therefore, a further improvement in thermodynamic efficiency will be needed in the future.
膜电容去离子（MCDI）是一种基于在两个相对放置的多孔碳电极之间施加电池电压的海水淡化技术。在每个电极的前面，都放置有一个离子交换膜，在它们之间，有一个间隔物，用于输送待淡化的水。在这项工作中，我们首次证明，在海水淡化过程中为给电极充电而使用的能量中，高达 83%可以在再生步骤中回收。这可以通过使用恒流条件来控制电极的充电和放电来实现。通过将能量回收作为 MCDI 操作的一个组成部分，整体能耗可以低至 0.26(kW·h)/m(3)，即可将盐度降低 10mM，这意味着 MCDI 处理微咸水比反渗透更节能。然而，测量到的能量消耗比理论上计算的脱盐水的能量消耗要高得多，因此，未来还需要进一步提高热力学效率。
