» ICT I: Desalination and Reuse

Increase drinking water supplies, to gain new waters from reuse and desalination from the "sea to sink to the sea again." Co-Leaders: John Georgiadis and Menachem Elimelech

The overarching goal for ICT I is to develop materials, methods, and systems to greatly improve the efficiency of desalination and reclamation of water for human use. Topics include interfacial behavior of aqueous constituents and materials, fundamentals of transport, energetics and thermodynamics, materials synthesis, and biological processes. There are three concentration areas in ICT I:

I-A: Thermal Desalination and Liquid Discharge Minimization Methods

I-B: Pressure-driven and Electrokinetic Membrane Water Filtration

I-C: Membrane Bioreactor Technology

Efforts in ICT I are aimed at synthesis, characterization, and system integration of new materials for removing large quantities of ions and contaminates from water. The core of this effort focuses on separating large quantities of natural constituents in different source waters at very low energy and with low fouling potential. We have a critical mass of researchers with expertise in membranes, materials characterization, transport, microbes and fouling. Multidisciplinary efforts are being driven foremost by fundamental understanding of water-consituent-material interactions on transport and separation. The team works on the following scientific and technical objectives:

Scientific and Technical Objectives

To understand and quantify the effect of restricted geometries on water and ion transport driven by pressure gradient or electrokinetic forces. This will allow us to better predict the energetics of separations of dissolved matter from solutions at aqueous interfaces or within material systems
To develop materials and systems that rely on (a). For membrane-based systems, the specific aims are to increase water permeability an order of magnitude, while increasing contaminant rejection and membrane strength and robustness. For thermal systems, the objective is to reduce energy expenditure by a factor of 5 from reverse osmosis at infinite dilution.
To understand microbe-solid surface interactions, elucidate the mechanisms of chemical and biological fouling and materials degradation, so as to alleviate them as much as possible.
To improve the economics of water desalination and reclamation systems while reducing the liquid discharge for inland desalination to less than 5% of total flux.

Stretch Goal: Remove total dissolved solids to produce safe drinking water from seawater for less than $300 per acre-foot (1233.5 cubic meters) and from contaminated fresh water for less than $10 per acre-foot.

Research Posters

The table below shows the available research posters. To view a poster, simply click on its title below. This requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded here for free. The Presenting Author column refers to the investigator who presented this poster at the 2005 NSF Site Visit.