Development of a capacitive deionization (CDI) device for water desalination

• Main Author: Muhammad Iskandar Senin
• Other Authors: Yang Chun, Charles
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering::Alternative, renewable energy sources; DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/75204
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Investing in water technologies has been the priority in many countriessuch asSingapore, Jordan and many more.According to Water Organization, over 844 million people do not have access to clean water.Clean water is a fundamental human need and water technologies such as reverse osmosis and evaporation havebeen greatly used at desalination plant to obtain clean water. However, these technologies have high energy consumption and high cost.Capacitive Deionization(CDI) technologyis the removal of ionic elements presencein the aqueous solution through low voltage and usage of electrodes. Ithas been the focus of many researchesas it has shownpositive results such aslow energy consumption and has a low cost to product obtained ratiocompared to the traditional reverse osmosis system used. Inthis final year project, CDI cell was designed,fabricated and experimented to study the effectson how the electrode particle size have on the performance of theCDI cell. Salt solution ispumped into the CDI cell at a constant flowrate. The solution flowsin between the two electrodes with an appliedpotential difference of 1.2V. During this process, the ions presencein the salt solution areabsorbed by the positive and negative electrodes. This would result in lower salinity of the solution. As salinity is directly proportional to the conductivity of the solution, a conductivity meter isused in the experiments to measure and record down the data.The hypothesis for this experiment would be the electrode with the smaller particle size would have a better adsorption rate due to the higher surface area compared to the bigger ones of the same material. At the end of the projectreport, recommendations for future studieswill be discussed and further elaborated.