Desalination plants are excellent applications for technology designed to extract the salt from sea water to make it fit to drink. There is, however, much brinier water and the research seeks out solutions for that.
Hot brines used in traditional membrane distillation systems are highly corrosive, making the heat exchangers and other system elements expensive, and limiting water recovery (a). To improve this, UCR researchers developed a self-heating carbon nanotube-based membrane that only heats brine at the membrane surface (b), where the porous carbon nanotube layer acts as a Joule heater (c).
Credit: UC Riverside
Science Daily: Squeezing every drop of fresh water from waste brine
That graphic is likely satisfactory for engineers but we are not of that ilk but it's revealed in the prose.
Engineers at the University of California, Riverside have developed a new way to recover almost 100 percent of the water from highly concentrated salt solutions. The system will alleviate water shortages in arid regions and reduce concerns surrounding high salinity brine disposal, such as hydraulic fracturing waste.
- SD
We know burning coal is filthy and so is fracking so there's no need for editorials and there's a much better one in a potential solution for at least part of the problem.
Now we have reason to be interested.
In addition to the significantly improved desalination performance, the team also investigated how the application of alternating currents to the membrane heating element could prevent degradation of the carbon nanotubes in the saline environment. Specifically, a threshold frequency was identified where electrochemical oxidation of the nanotubes was prevented, allowing the nanotube films to be operated for significant lengths of time with no reduction in performance. The insights provided by this work will allow carbon nanotube-based heating elements to be used in other applications where electrochemical stability of the nanotubes is a concern.
- SD
From the conclusion we can see their methods work and therefore may represent a coherent method for dealing with some of the pollution from hydraulic fracking.
As always, the interested student is invited to pursue the entirety of the source article for the fullness of the concept and the technology.
Hot brines used in traditional membrane distillation systems are highly corrosive, making the heat exchangers and other system elements expensive, and limiting water recovery (a). To improve this, UCR researchers developed a self-heating carbon nanotube-based membrane that only heats brine at the membrane surface (b), where the porous carbon nanotube layer acts as a Joule heater (c).
Credit: UC Riverside
Science Daily: Squeezing every drop of fresh water from waste brine
That graphic is likely satisfactory for engineers but we are not of that ilk but it's revealed in the prose.
Engineers at the University of California, Riverside have developed a new way to recover almost 100 percent of the water from highly concentrated salt solutions. The system will alleviate water shortages in arid regions and reduce concerns surrounding high salinity brine disposal, such as hydraulic fracturing waste.
- SD
We know burning coal is filthy and so is fracking so there's no need for editorials and there's a much better one in a potential solution for at least part of the problem.
Now we have reason to be interested.
In addition to the significantly improved desalination performance, the team also investigated how the application of alternating currents to the membrane heating element could prevent degradation of the carbon nanotubes in the saline environment. Specifically, a threshold frequency was identified where electrochemical oxidation of the nanotubes was prevented, allowing the nanotube films to be operated for significant lengths of time with no reduction in performance. The insights provided by this work will allow carbon nanotube-based heating elements to be used in other applications where electrochemical stability of the nanotubes is a concern.
- SD
From the conclusion we can see their methods work and therefore may represent a coherent method for dealing with some of the pollution from hydraulic fracking.
As always, the interested student is invited to pursue the entirety of the source article for the fullness of the concept and the technology.
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