Electrochemistry in Action-Water Desalination

As climate change intensifies, weather patterns across the globe become far less patterned and more unpredictable. Instances of extreme heat, excessive rain resulting in floods, and droughts that may cause or intensify wildfires have severely stressed centralized water treatment and distribution facilities and compromised access to fresh water for many. Given the vast reserve of saltwater, desalination technologies that can separate the dissolved salts from the fresh water have become essential. Traditional desalination methods use either membrane or thermal-based technologies to separate solutes from salt water and brackish water that have typical concentrations of 35,000 and 1,000 mg/L, respectively. However, they can be unnecessarily energy-intensive for lower salinity conditions. A potential next-generation approach is desalination fuel cells. Desalination fuel cells have the capability to simultaneously desalinate water and produce energy.