GREEN ENERGY HARVESTING FROM CONCENTRATED SALTWORKS BITTERNS BY REVERSE ELECTRODIALYSIS

Concentrated bitterns discharged from saltworks have extremely high salinity, often up to 300 g/L, thus their direct disposal not only can have harmful effect on the environment, but also generates a depletion of a potential resource of renewable energy. Here, reverse electrodialysis (RED), an emerging electrochemical membrane process, is introduced to capture the salinity gradient power (SGP) intrinsically conveyed by these bitterns also aiming at the reduction of concentrated salty water disposal. A RED unit at the laboratory scale has been adopted to study the SGP potential with different ion exchange membrane and different operating conditions. In particular, membranes supplied by Fujif…