Award Abstract # 1931659
Enabling Minimal Brine Discharge Desalination Using Intercalation Reactions

NSF Org: CBET
Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems
Recipient: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
Initial Amendment Date: July 9, 2019
Latest Amendment Date: October 8, 2024
Award Number: 1931659
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Catherine Walker
cawalker@nsf.gov
 (703)292-7125
CBET
 Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems
ENG
 Directorate for Engineering
Start Date: January 1, 2020
End Date: December 31, 2025 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $319,973.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $327,723.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2019 = $319,973.00
FY 2022 = $7,750.00
History of Investigator:
  • Kyle Smith (Principal Investigator)
    kcsmith@illinois.edu
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
506 S WRIGHT ST
URBANA
IL  US  61801-3620
(217)333-2187
Sponsor Congressional District: 13
Primary Place of Performance: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
506 S. Wright Street
Urbana
IL  US  61801-3620
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
13
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): Y8CWNJRCNN91
Parent UEI: V2PHZ2CSCH63
NSF Program(s): Interfacial Engineering Progra,
EchemS-Electrochemical Systems
Primary Program Source: 01002223DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 9251
Program Element Code(s): 141700, 764400
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.041

ABSTRACT

Freshwater depletion threatens human livelihood and security globally. Desalination, or removing salt ions from sea and brackish waters, could increase freshwater access, but co-produced brine, or waste salt water, requires disposal that is costly and environmentally unsustainable. The goal of this project is to develop a cost-effective, energy-efficient brine concentration process that will produce more fresh water relative to the amount of co-produced waste brine, benefiting large-scale desalination facilities across municipal, agricultural, and industrial sectors. Unlike thermal processes for brine disposal, which require water evaporation, this research will investigate a novel process using electrically-driven reactions to concentrate brines with low energy and cost, while simultaneously desalinating feedwater. These reactions, in which ions move into a material, are called intercalation and have been used in the past for energy storage. However, their use in brine concentration requires faster, reversible intercalation of various ions with differing sizes, with low energy use. The primary objective of this project is, thus, to characterize, design, and model electric deionization devices using cation intercalation reactions for the concentration of brines. The expected improvement in desalination performance will be accomplished using the synergistic effects of two intercalation materials, one designed to accept larger ions while the second is designed to accept smaller ions. Beyond its immediate broader impacts and the involvement of graduate students therein, this research will broaden the participation of women and underrepresented groups in STEM through the development and dissemination of complementary educational materials. A design-oriented "3D-Desalination" (Digital Device Design for Desalination) activity linking chemistry, engineering, and desalination will be created with associated curricula developed in collaboration with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) outreach coordinator. Participation of pre-college women in these STEM activities will occur through GAMES (Girls Adventures in Math, Engineering and Science) camps and through summer teacher workshops at UIUC.

This project aims to develop improved intercalation materials for use in desalination. These improved materials incorporate solid intercalation nanoparticles into porous electrodes and exhibit high volumetric loading and facile charge transport. The hypothesis that raw cation absorption and absorption rate can be balanced by combining high-capacity materials having small interstitials with lower capacity materials having large interstitials will be tested by combining intercalation materials of differing composition to synergistically concentrate dissolved alkali/alkaline-earth salt mixtures. The low electronic conductivity of many intercalation materials necessitates their integration with conductive additives to sustain high-rate cycling. A novel wet-phase inversion process will be created here to fabricate porous electrodes with high intercalation-material loading and fast electron/ion transport by promoting electronic percolation. Previous modeling and experiments of electrochemical desalination with lower salinity feeds suggest that flow-through electrodes and anion-selective membranes increase salt removal. Separations performance of an electrochemical flow cell will, therefore, be characterized experimentally with various flow fields and separators. With measurements of the effective transport properties of electrodes computational modeling will be validated and used to quantify local energy loss mechanisms in individual device components. The outcome of the project will be further knowledge in the use mixed intercalation materials and the synergistic interaction between materials with differing capacity and interstitial size. The project is jointly supported by the Molecular Separations and the Electrochemical Systems programs in the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Do, Vu Q. and Reale, Erik R. and Loud, Irwin C. and Rozzi, Paul G. and Tan, Haosen and Willis, David A. and Smith, Kyle C. "Embedded, micro-interdigitated flow fields in high areal-loading intercalation electrodes towards seawater desalination and beyond" Energy & Environmental Science , v.16 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1039/d3ee01302b Citation Details
Hamid, Md Abdul and Smith, Kyle C. "A bottom-up, multi-scale theory for transient mass transport of redox-active species through porous electrodes beyond the pseudo-steady limit" Journal of Power Sources , v.565 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2023.232756 Citation Details
Liu, Sizhe and Do, Vu Quoc and Smith, Kyle C. "Modeling of electrochemical deionization across length scales: Recent accomplishments and new opportunities" Current Opinion in Electrochemistry , v.22 , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coelec.2020.05.003 Citation Details
Liu, Sizhe and Smith, Kyle C. "Effects of interstitial water and alkali cations on the expansion, intercalation potential, and orbital coupling of nickel hexacyanoferrate from first principles" Journal of Applied Physics , v.131 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0080547 Citation Details
Liu, Sizhe and Smith, Kyle C. "Linking the polyatomic arrangements of interstitial H2O and cations to bonding within Prussian blue analogues ab initio using gradient-boost" Physical Review Materials , v.5 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.5.035003 Citation Details
Reale, Erik R. and Regenwetter, Lyle and Agrawal, Adreet and Dardón, Brian and Dicola, Nicholas and Sanagala, Sathvik and Smith, Kyle C. "Low porosity, high areal-capacity Prussian blue analogue electrodes enhance salt removal and thermodynamic efficiency in symmetric Faradaic deionization with automated fluid control" Water Research X , v.13 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wroa.2021.100116 Citation Details
Shrivastava, Aniruddh and Do, Vu Q. and Smith, Kyle C. "Efficient, Selective Sodium and Lithium Removal by Faradaic Deionization Using Symmetric Sodium Titanium Vanadium Phosphate Intercalation Electrodes" ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces , v.14 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.2c03261 Citation Details

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