Search results for " Salinity Gradient"
showing 10 items of 26 documents
Towards 1 kW power production in a reverse electrodialysis pilot plant with saline waters and concentrated brines
2017
Abstract Reverse electrodialysis (RED) is a promising technology to extract energy from salinity gradients, especially in the areas where concentrated brine and saline waters are available as feed streams. A first pilot-scale plant was recently built in Trapani (Italy), and tested with real brackish water and brine from saltworks. The present work focuses on the scale-up of the pilot plant, reaching more than 400 m 2 of total membrane area installed and representing the largest operating RED plant so far reported in the literature. With a nominal power capacity of 1 kW, the pilot plant reached almost 700 W of power capacity using artificial brine and brackish water, while a 50% decrease in …
Feasibility of Producing Electricity, Hydrogen, and Chlorine via Reverse Electrodialysis
2022
Reverse electrodialysis (RED) is a technology to generate electricity from two streams with different salinities. While RED systems have been conventionally used for electricity generation, recent works explored combining RED for production of valuable gases. This work investigates the feasibility of producing hydrogen and chlorine in addition to electricity in an RED stack and identifies potential levers for improvement. A simplified one-dimensional model is adopted to assess the technical and economic feasibility of the process. We notice a strong disparity in typical current densities of RED fed with seawater and river water and that in typical water (or chlor-alkali) electrolysis. This …
Potential applications of Salinity Gradient Power-Heat Engines for recovering low-temperature waste heat in cogeneration plants
2021
Abstract Salinity Gradient Power-Heat Engine is an innovative technology able to convert very low-temperature heat into electricity. Energy and economic benefits could be achieved by integrating this technology into cogeneration plants, where the exploitation of waste heat available during the operation could increase the revenues arising from “High-Efficiency” labels. For the first time, this paper proposes two potential applications in this field, and three illustrative case studies are purposely investigated. In the first case study, a salinity gradient-heat engine converts the waste heat available from a cogeneration plant serving an industrial process. In the second case study, a salin…
CFD modelling of profiled-membrane channels for reverse electrodialysis
2014
Abstract: Reverse electrodialysis (RE) is a promising technology for electric power generation from controlled mixing of two differently concentrated salt solutions, where ion-exchange membranes are adopted for the generation of ionic currents within the system. Channel geometry strongly influences fluid flow and thus crucial phenomena such as pressure drop and concentration polarization. Profiled membranes are an alternative to the more commonly adopted net spacers and offer a number of advantages: avoiding the use of non-conductive and relatively expensive materials, reducing hydraulic losses and increasing the active membrane area. In this work, Computational Fluid Dynamic simulations we…
A novel Reverse Electrodialysis application to generate power from low-grade heat
2015
A novel idea for the conversion of low-temperature heat into electricity is based on the generation of electricity from salinity gradients using a Reverse Electrodialysis (RED) device in a closed-loop system. In this concept a limited amount of artificial saline solutions can be used as the working fluids in a closed-loop. The solutions exiting from the RED unit are then regenerated, in order to restore the original salinity gradient, by means of a separation step, which uses low-temperature heat (40-100°C) as its energy source. A theoretical analysis of potentials of this technology is illustrated in the present work.
Maximum Net Power Density Conditions in Reverse Electrodialysis Stacks
2018
Reverse Electrodialysis (RED) harvests electrical energy from a salinity gradient. The maximum obtainable net power density (NPD) depends on many physical and geometric variables. Some have a monotonic (beneficial or detrimental) influence on NPD, and can be regarded as “scenario” variables chosen by criteria other than NPD maximization. Others, namely the thicknesses HCONC, HDIL and the velocities UCONC, UDIL in the concentrate and diluate channels, have contrasting effects, so that the NPD maximum is obtained for some intermediate values of these parameters. A 1-D model of a RED stack was coupled here with an optimization algorithm to determine the conditions of maximum NPD in the space o…
Performance of a RED system with ammonium hydrogen carbonate solutions
2016
The use of closed-loop salinity gradient power (SGP) technologies has been recently presented as a viable option to generate power using low-grade heat, by coupling a SGP unit with a thermally-driven regeneration process in a closed loop where artificial solutions can be adopted for the conversion of heat into power. Among these, the closed-loop reverse electrodialysis (RED) process presents a number of advantages such as the direct production of electricity, the extreme flexibility in operating conditions and the recently demonstrated large potentials for industrial scale-up. Ammonium hydrogen carbonate (NH4HCO3) is a salt suitable for such closed-loop RED process thanks to its particular …
Reverse electrodialysis with NH4HCO3-water systems for heat-to-power conversion
2017
Abstract A Reverse ElectroDialysis Heat Engine (REDHE) system operating with “thermolytic” ammonium hydrogen-carbonate (NH4HCO3) aqueous solutions as working fluids is studied. The engine is constituted by (i) a RED unit to produce electric power by mixing the solutions at different salinity and (ii) a thermally-driven regeneration unit including a stripping and an absorption column to restore the initial salinity gradient thus closing the cycle. In the present work only the RED unit and the stripping column are taken into account. In particular, a simplified integrated process model for the whole cycle was developed: it consists of (i) a lumped parameter model for the RED unit validated wi…
CFD prediction of scalar transport in thin channels for reverse electrodialysis
2014
Reverse ElectroDialysis (RED) is a very promising technology allowing the electrochemical potential difference of a salinity gradient to be directly converted into electric energy. The fluid dynamics optimization of the thin channels used in RED is still an open problem. The present preliminary work focuses on the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation of the flow and concentration fields in these channels. In particular three different configurations were investigated: a channel unprovided with a spacer (empty channel) and two channels filled with spacers, one made of overlapped filaments the other of woven filaments. The transport of two passive scalars, representative of the ions …
Reverse Electrodialysis: Applications to Different Case Studies
2018
Salinity gradient is a non-conventional renewable energy form which is widely available worldwide. Reverse Electrodialysis is a promising and innovative technology able to convert directly this chemical renewable energy into electricity. This paper presents a number of different scenarios where salinity gradients are naturally available or they result from industrial/urban activities. A sophisticated model accounting for all the main phenomena (including all the detrimental ones) occurring within a Reverse Electrodialysis unit has been purposely developed. The model is used to calculate how much electric energy can be harvested from the above-mentioned salinity gradients.