ETA 2021 Strategic Plan - Flipbook - Page 64
Novel Desalination Technologies
This area focuses on new separation processes
and hybrid technologies, water–energy system
integration, and mitigation of environmental
impacts to achieve lower-cost, more effective,
and sustainable desalination of nontraditional
waters.
New Paradigms for Separation Processes
and Desalination Technologies. ETA, in close
collaboration with Berkeley Lab’s ESA, is
exploring the basic physical and chemical
properties of water and water-based
electrolytes via a unique blend of inorganic
synthesis and optical and xray microscopy
and spectroscopy coupled with novel microdroplet and aerosol methods. We seek to
exploit these effects to enhance contaminantselective separations of saline and brackish
water within nano-engineered materials to
discover and accelerate development of novel
desalination processes. The goal is to probe and
tune these properties at the molecular level,
to enable a device design that will shape a new
paradigm in desalination and separations. The
ongoing fundamental research at ETA and ESA
focuses on extending the experimental and
theoretical studies on solvated ion structuring
at the water/vapor interface to interfaces of
water and solids. Harnessing Berkeley Lab’s
strengths in data science, high-performance
computing, fundamental process discovery, and
materials science and manufacturing, ETA is
62
|
E TA S t r a t e g i c P l a n 2 0 2 1 - 2 0 3 0
working toward technological innovations and
improvements toward lower cost, improved
energy efficiency, and reduced carbon emission
of desalination of unconventional water.
New Approaches for Integrating Renewable
Energy and/or Low-Grade Heat with Desalination.
A portable, facile, and individually adaptable
desalination technology can be achieved with
new advanced molecular framework materials
with high ion sorption capacity toward saline
salts. High surface area for efficient ion
transport, and accessibility to high-density
binding sites in these materials facilitate the
efficient complexation of ions within the
inorganic or organic matrix, which can increase
the overall desalination rate significantly.
The use of renewables to achieve recovery of
adsorbed salts can be realized by integrating
these materials with selective solar emitter
devices.
Forward osmosis (FO) is another membranebased separation process that has achieved
some market success. However, substantial
research, development, demonstration, and
deployment must be completed for this
method to compete with RO and traditional
thermal desalination techniques. The ongoing
work on FO water purification relies on a class
of thermally sensitive draw agents that can
significantly reduce the cost of desalination
and enhance FO application to highly saline
brines and zero-liquid discharge separation
