New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals and could save billions of dollars globally

Good news! Desalination is salvation!

"Water desalination plants could replace expensive chemicals with new carbon cloth electrodes that remove boron from seawater, an important step of turning seawater into safe drinking water. ..."

From the abstract:

"Selective removal of trace contaminants from water remains a crucial challenge in water treatment. Boron is a trace contaminant that is ubiquitous in seawater and has been widely detected in groundwater.

Current boron removal methods, such as multi-stage reverse osmosis and ion-exchange adsorption, are chemical and energy intensive, necessitating the development of more sustainable technologies.

Here we address this challenge by developing surface functionalized microporous electrodes that enable boron-selective bipolar membrane-assisted electrosorption.

Our study demonstrates that micropore functionalization with oxygen-containing (hydroxyl, lactone and carboxyl) and boron-selective (dopamine, 3-methylamino-1,2-propanediol and N-methyl-d-glucamine) functional groups substantially improves electrode performance for boron removal and selectivity.

The functionalized electrodes exhibit a boron removal selectivity that is an order of magnitude higher than that of the pristine electrode, facilitating energy efficient boron electrosorption.

We identify hydroxyl groups as the key factor in enhancing boron removal performance and selectivity during electrosorption.

Molecular dynamics simulations demonstrate the underlying mechanisms of boron selectivity, highlighting the role of hydrogen bonding between hydroxyl groups and boron in governing the boron-selective electrosorption process."

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals (original news release) "Cutting acid and base treatments from conventional desalination plants could save billions of dollars globally, making seawater a more affordable option for drinking water"

A highly selective and energy efficient approach to boron removal overcomes the Achilles heel of seawater desalination (no public access)

This diagram shows how boron is removed by the researchers’ electrodes.

First a majority of the salt ions are removed with reverse osmosis.

Then the water flows into a cell containing a membrane with positive (pink) and negative (orange) layers. Similarly charged electrodes face the membrane layers, and when a current is applied, water molecules at the interface of the membranes split into hydrogen and hydroxide ions. The hydroxide ions stick to boron, causing it to stick to the positive electrode.