Project Update 1: Charged with a Salt and Battery: Crime Doesn't Pay, but Clean Energy Does!
Working in the greenhouse entails several things. The first, of course, is teaching. Second is the hackathon. Third, our project: making whatever we want that fits with the greenhouse's theme of sustainability and future-thinking.
The future of clean energy revolves around energy storage, and that is what we decided to focus on. We're constructing a battery run on algae, anaerobic bacteria, and saltwater. It produces a small electric current and, arguably more important, it reduces the concentration of salt in the water by around 40%.
Water desalination is an energy-intensive venture. The most common practice is to pull the water through a reverse osmosis (RO) membrane, resulting in freshwater and water with a high concentration of salt. The water from the battery, with reduced salt content, would then require less energy to produce the same amount of clean water.
The cell that we are working on building was a recent invention, appearing in papers within the last decade. We aim first to construct it, and then, time permitting, to improve its efficiency at energy production and salt reduction. The end goal is to have a system that is net-zero in energy usage, and produces fresh water, through a combination of the battery and a reverse osmosis membrane and pump setup.
Currently, we are running into problems producing the ion-exchange membranes. Yesterday we poured them into the mold and cooled them, only for them to fall out almost immediately. We have a new plan of attack today that will hopefully fix this problem. More updates to come.
The future of clean energy revolves around energy storage, and that is what we decided to focus on. We're constructing a battery run on algae, anaerobic bacteria, and saltwater. It produces a small electric current and, arguably more important, it reduces the concentration of salt in the water by around 40%.
Water desalination is an energy-intensive venture. The most common practice is to pull the water through a reverse osmosis (RO) membrane, resulting in freshwater and water with a high concentration of salt. The water from the battery, with reduced salt content, would then require less energy to produce the same amount of clean water.
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| Reverse Osmosis Schematic: By Colby Fisher (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Description: Salt water enters through (A) into vessel (B), where it is pulled through the RO membrane (D). This leaves a high concentration of salt on one side of the membrane (C), and freshwater on the other (E), which is then pumped out to distribution (F) |
The cell that we are working on building was a recent invention, appearing in papers within the last decade. We aim first to construct it, and then, time permitting, to improve its efficiency at energy production and salt reduction. The end goal is to have a system that is net-zero in energy usage, and produces fresh water, through a combination of the battery and a reverse osmosis membrane and pump setup.
Currently, we are running into problems producing the ion-exchange membranes. Yesterday we poured them into the mold and cooled them, only for them to fall out almost immediately. We have a new plan of attack today that will hopefully fix this problem. More updates to come.
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| What's that in the sky? Why, it's a bat-tree! Artist: Rayna Higuchi |
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