
NSF Org: |
CBET Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems |
Recipient: |
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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 2022 = $7,750.00 |
History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
506 S WRIGHT ST URBANA IL US 61801-3620 (217)333-2187 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
506 S. Wright Street Urbana IL US 61801-3620 |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): |
Interfacial Engineering Progra, EchemS-Electrochemical Systems |
Primary Program Source: |
01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
Program Reference Code(s): |
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Program Element Code(s): |
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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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