Filtering wastewater and other water sources into potable or usable water is a high-energy process. So, what if electricity could be generated during the water purification process?
A research team from universities in South Korea has developed a multifunctional membrane that simultaneously generates electricity while purifying wastewater into drinking water.
The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has announced that Dr Ji-Soo Jang’s team from the Electronic Materials Research Center and Professor Tae-Gwang Yoon’s team from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Myongji University have jointly developed an advanced membrane that can simultaneously provide drinking water and generate continuous electricity from various water resources, such as sewage/wastewater, seawater, and groundwater.
The developed “sandwich-like” membrane comprises a porous membrane that filters water at the bottom and a conductive polymer that generates electricity at the top. The membrane is designed to purify wastewater by controlling the direction of the water flow. Water flowing perpendicularly to the membrane generates direct current by moving ions along the horizontal direction.
Filter wastewater and generate electricity at the same time
The membrane can reject more than 95 per cent of the contaminants of sizes less than 10 nm (one hundred-millionth of a meter). Hence, microplastics and heavy metal particles in wastewater can be removed, and continuous electricity can be generated for more than three hours with only 10 µl (microliter) of water.
Since the membrane can be manufactured using a simple printing process without size restrictions, it has a high potential to be commercialised due to low manufacturing costs and processing time.
The research team is currently conducting follow-up research to generate electricity while improving the water quality of wastewater to the level of drinking water by developing the membrane for an actual factory.
Dr Ji-Soo Jang from KIST expressed his opinion on the research, saying, “As a novel technology that can solve water shortage problem and produce eco-friendly energy simultaneously, it also has great potential applications in the water quality management system and emergency power system.”
The paper was published in Advanced Materials under the title, “Bidirectional Water-Stream Behavior on a Multifunctional Membrane for Simultaneous Energy Generation and Water Purification.”
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