Karakoç Ezgi, Güler Enver
Department of Chemical Engineering, Atılım University, Ankara 06830, Turkey.
Membranes (Basel). 2022 Feb 24;12(3):257. doi: 10.3390/membranes12030257.
The development of the most effective, suitable and economic ion-exchange membranes is crucial for reverse electrodialysis (RED)-the most widely studied process to harvest salinity gradient energy from mixing seawater and river water. RED utilizes two types of membranes as core elements, namely cation exchange membranes (CEM) and anion exchange membranes (AEM). Since the preparation of AEMs is more complex compared to CEMs, the design and development of anion exchange membranes have been the focus in this study. Homogeneous AEMs based on two types of polyepichlorohydrin (PECH) with different chlorine amounts (PECH-H, 37 wt% and PECH-C, 25 wt%) were synthesized, and first-time benchmarking of the membrane properties was conducted. In addition to physicochemical membrane properties, some instrumental analyses such as SEM, FTIR and DSC were investigated to characterize these anion-exchange membranes. Based on the results, although the PECH-H-type membrane had enhanced ion-exchange properties, PECH-C-based anion-exchange membranes exhibited a higher power density of 0.316 W/m in a lab-scale RED system. Evidently, there is room for the development of new types of PECH-C-based AEMs with great potential for energy generation in the RED process.
开发最有效、合适且经济的离子交换膜对于反向电渗析（RED）至关重要，RED是从混合海水和河水中获取盐度梯度能研究最为广泛的过程。RED利用两种类型的膜作为核心元件，即阳离子交换膜（CEM）和阴离子交换膜（AEM）。由于AEM的制备比CEM更复杂，因此阴离子交换膜的设计和开发一直是本研究的重点。合成了基于两种不同氯含量（PECH-H，37 wt%和PECH-C，25 wt%）的聚环氧氯丙烷（PECH）的均相AEM，并首次对膜性能进行了基准测试。除了膜的物理化学性质外，还进行了一些仪器分析，如SEM、FTIR和DSC，以表征这些阴离子交换膜。基于这些结果，尽管PECH-H型膜具有增强的离子交换性能，但在实验室规模的RED系统中，基于PECH-C的阴离子交换膜表现出更高的功率密度，为0.316 W/m。显然，开发新型基于PECH-C的AEM具有很大空间，在RED过程中具有巨大的能量产生潜力。
