UNS: Collaborative Research: Non-Membrane, Low Temperature and Low Emission Water Desalination Using Directional Solvent

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1510826/1512113 Luo / Shah Project Overview: Water scarcity is among the most serious challenges faced by the world today. Desalination has emerged as a potential solution. This collaborative project will examine a novel water desalination technology which does not use membranes. Current water desalination technologies are either evaporation-based or membrane-based, and they are costly and energy intensive, and also contribute to global-warming CO2 emissions. The proposed research will be driven by the hypothesis that the water solubility in directional solvents can be tuned by varying their molecular structures. Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics simulations will be performed to calculate the phase-equilibria of directional solvents with salt and water as a function of temperature. The knowledge of interactions, obtained from the simulations, between the functional groups and water will form the basis of a correlation between the chemical structure and directionality of water and salt solubilities in the solvent, enabling rational design of high-performance directional solvents. According to the extracted trend, high throughput experimental screening of promising directional solvents will be performed to identify highly efficient directional solvents. Based on the directional solvents, a lab-scale continuous desalination system will be designed and demonstrated.