Premium
Tailor‐Made Anion‐Exchange Membranes for Salinity Gradient Power Generation Using Reverse Electrodialysis
Author(s) -
Guler Enver,
Zhang Yali,
Saakes Michel,
Nijmeijer Kitty
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
chemsuschem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.412
H-Index - 157
eISSN - 1864-564X
pISSN - 1864-5631
DOI - 10.1002/cssc.201200298
Subject(s) - reversed electrodialysis , membrane , electrodialysis , ion exchange , osmotic power , chemistry , ion exchange membranes , salt (chemistry) , chemical engineering , dabco , inorganic chemistry , ion , octane , organic chemistry , reverse osmosis , forward osmosis , biochemistry , engineering
Reverse electrodialysis (RED) or blue energy is a non‐polluting, sustainable technology for generating power from the mixing of solutions with different salinity, that is, seawater and river water. A concentrated salt solution (e.g., seawater) and a diluted salt solution (e.g., river water) are brought into contact through an alternating series of polymeric anion‐exchange membranes (AEMs) and cation‐exchange membranes (CEMs), which are either selective for anions or cations. Currently available ion‐exchange membranes are not optimized for RED, whereas successful RED operation notably depends on the used ion‐exchange membranes. We designed such ion‐exchange membranes and for the first time we show the performance of tailor‐made membranes in RED. More specifically, we focus on the development of AEMs because these are much more complex to prepare. Herein we propose a safe and more environmentally friendly method and use halogenated polyethers, such as polyepichlorohydrin (PECH) as the starting material. A tertiary diamine (1,4‐diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane, DABCO) was used to introduce the ion‐exchange groups by amination and for simultaneous cross‐linking of the polymer membrane. Area resistances of the series of membranes ranged from 0.82 to 2.05 Ω cm 2 and permselectivities from 87 to 90 %. For the first time we showed that tailor‐made ion‐exchange membranes can be applied in RED. Depending on the properties and especially membrane thickness, application of these membranes in RED resulted in a high power density of 1.27 W m −2 , which exceeds the power output obtained with the commercially available AMX membranes. This shows the potential of the design of ion‐exchange membranes for a viable blue energy process.