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Battery Desalinates Seawater

20 points by pwg 15y ago

bwarp 15y ago
It's not a battery - it's a cell and it doesn't generate power. It takes power. It only gets about 50% out. I did this in chemistry at school about 25 years ago.
- Panoramix 15y ago
  Paper title: "Batteries for Efficient Energy Extraction from a Water Salinity Difference" Why comment if you didn't read the article? is this "humor"?
  - Retric 15y ago
    You can gain energy by mixing fresh water and salt water, or you can use energy to extract salt from sea water, but you can't gain energy extracting salt from sea water. Edit: “The desalination battery is essentially the same device, but reversed,” explains La Mantia, who worked again with Cui and other researchers, on the new study. The desalinated water that comes from the battery still contains too much salt for drinking, La Mantia says: “We removed up to 50% of the original salt, but we need to arrive at 98%.” PS: Reverse osmosis uses more energy the saltier the water is so depending on how much energy this process uses it could be useful as a first stage prior to reverse osmosis filtering even if it can only remove 50% of the salt.
rsanchez1 15y ago
Well, I guess when you remove 50% of the salt, it technically desalinates water. This is nothing to get excited about until it turns seawater into drinking water both cheaply and at a large scale.
- Panoramix 15y ago
  The exciting part is that it generates electricity while desalinating water. That's a nice combo.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 15y ago
    No, there's a different device that produces power and this is its inverse. The article is not worded very clearly.
Tycho 15y ago
If they meet their goal of making this 98% effective at removing salt, what would be the economic impact of this technology?
- anamax 15y ago
  > If they meet their goal of making this 98% effective at removing salt, what would be the economic impact of this technology? Its economic impact will depends on its costs. This is merely yet another way to use energy to produce "less salty water". There are lots of such schemes.

20 points by pwg 15y ago

bwarp 15y ago

It's not a battery - it's a cell and it doesn't generate power. It takes power. It only gets about 50% out. I did this in chemistry at school about 25 years ago.

Panoramix 15y ago
Paper title: "Batteries for Efficient Energy Extraction from a Water Salinity Difference" Why comment if you didn't read the article? is this "humor"?
- Retric 15y ago
  You can gain energy by mixing fresh water and salt water, or you can use energy to extract salt from sea water, but you can't gain energy extracting salt from sea water. Edit: “The desalination battery is essentially the same device, but reversed,” explains La Mantia, who worked again with Cui and other researchers, on the new study. The desalinated water that comes from the battery still contains too much salt for drinking, La Mantia says: “We removed up to 50% of the original salt, but we need to arrive at 98%.” PS: Reverse osmosis uses more energy the saltier the water is so depending on how much energy this process uses it could be useful as a first stage prior to reverse osmosis filtering even if it can only remove 50% of the salt.

rsanchez1 15y ago

Well, I guess when you remove 50% of the salt, it technically desalinates water. This is nothing to get excited about until it turns seawater into drinking water both cheaply and at a large scale.

Panoramix 15y ago
The exciting part is that it generates electricity while desalinating water. That's a nice combo.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- Dylan16807 15y ago
  No, there's a different device that produces power and this is its inverse. The article is not worded very clearly.

Tycho 15y ago

If they meet their goal of making this 98% effective at removing salt, what would be the economic impact of this technology?

anamax 15y ago
> If they meet their goal of making this 98% effective at removing salt, what would be the economic impact of this technology? Its economic impact will depends on its costs. This is merely yet another way to use energy to produce "less salty water". There are lots of such schemes.