TY - JOUR
T1 - Path toward sustainable desalination
T2 - Sodium precipitation and carbon capture
AU - Elsayed, Ahmed
AU - Al-Marzouqi, Ali H.
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Dr. Mohamednoor Al-Tarawneh from United Arab Emirates University for his assistance in modeling gas absorption with kinetic reactions. We would also like to show our gratitude to Dr. Allen Leal from ETH – Zurich for his comments on combining thermodynamic algebraic equations and kinetic differential equations. In addition, we are immensely grateful to Dr. Nazar Zaki from United Arab Emirates University for providing his guidance on the programming side. Furthermore, we would like to thank Jawad Mustafa and Dr. Ameera Fares from United Arab Emirates University for providing feedback on the manuscript. Finally, this research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2023/3/1
Y1 - 2023/3/1
N2 - Current desalination technologies are not sustainably scalable due to high operational costs, high carbon emissions, and the environmental impact of brine. Almost all desalination plants built today use Reverse Osmosis technology, with research primarily focused on developing ultra-high permeability membranes that lower specific energy consumed. We believe sustainable desalination can be achieved by optimizing the overall Reverse Osmosis system. Our method takes advantage of the high-pressure brine, high levels of total dissolved solids, and the sheer amount of brine waste discarded. This is achieved by bubbling CO2 into ammoniated brine to precipitate sodium ions. The process was studied by modeling CO2 absorption, simulating real brine behavior, and optimizing for sodium removal. The results showed that ammonia requires 528 kg of CO2 per cubic meter of freshwater. In addition, the results revealed that CO2 absorption at 22.2 °C and 68.7 bar removed 72.5 % of the dissolved sodium. Ammonia unlocks the path toward sustainable desalination, as it can be absorbed and regenerated within the reverse osmosis system.
AB - Current desalination technologies are not sustainably scalable due to high operational costs, high carbon emissions, and the environmental impact of brine. Almost all desalination plants built today use Reverse Osmosis technology, with research primarily focused on developing ultra-high permeability membranes that lower specific energy consumed. We believe sustainable desalination can be achieved by optimizing the overall Reverse Osmosis system. Our method takes advantage of the high-pressure brine, high levels of total dissolved solids, and the sheer amount of brine waste discarded. This is achieved by bubbling CO2 into ammoniated brine to precipitate sodium ions. The process was studied by modeling CO2 absorption, simulating real brine behavior, and optimizing for sodium removal. The results showed that ammonia requires 528 kg of CO2 per cubic meter of freshwater. In addition, the results revealed that CO2 absorption at 22.2 °C and 68.7 bar removed 72.5 % of the dissolved sodium. Ammonia unlocks the path toward sustainable desalination, as it can be absorbed and regenerated within the reverse osmosis system.
KW - Brine management
KW - Circular economy
KW - Reverse osmosis
KW - Sustainable desalination
KW - Zero liquid discharge
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U2 - 10.1016/j.desal.2022.116324
DO - 10.1016/j.desal.2022.116324
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85145727159
SN - 0011-9164
VL - 549
JO - Desalination
JF - Desalination
M1 - 116324
ER -
