Direct Numerical Simulation of Seawater Desalination Based on Ion Concentration Polarization

Abstract

The problem of water shortage needs to be solved urgently. The membrane-embedded microchannel structure based on the ion concentration polarization (ICP) desalination effect is a potential portable desalination device with low energy consumption and high efficiency. The electroosmotic flow in the microchannel of the cation exchange membrane and the desalination effect of the system are numerically analyzed. The results show that when the horizontal electric field intensity is 2 kV/m and the transmembrane voltage is 400 mV, the desalting efficiency reaches 97.3%. When the electric field strength increases to 20 kV/m, the desalination efficiency is reduced by 2%. In terms of fluid motion, under the action of the transmembrane voltage, two reverse eddy currents are formed on the surface of the membrane due to the opposite electric field and pressure difference on both sides of the membrane, forming a pumping effect. The electromotive force in the channel exhibits significant pressure-flow characteristics with a slip boundary at a speed approximately six times that of a non-membrane microchannel.

Recent Advances in Microfluidic Devices for Contamination Detection and Quality Inspection of Milk

“…Likewise, a stir bar coated with AuNPs and combined with a microchip device has been shown to be effective in restoring DNA multi-arm link recovery for signal transduction and amplification purposes in the rapid detection of antibiotics [ 64 ]. In addition, some microfluidic pre-concentration/amplification techniques have been applied to biological samples such as isotachophoresis (ITP) [ 120 , 121 , 122 , 123 , 124 , 125 , 126 ], ion concentration polarization (ICP) [ 127 , 128 , 129 , 130 , 131 , 132 ], electrokinetic stacking (EKS) [ 133 , 134 , 135 , 136 , 137 ], field amplification stacking (FAS) [ 138 , 139 , 140 , 141 ], and multiplex electroanalytical techniques [ 142 , 143 ]. Although it has not been applied to milk analysis, it is also an important reference for future research.…”

Recent advances in paper‐based preconcentrators by utilizing ion concentration polarization

“…Research on the ICP effect is still in progress. Recently, some researchers have performed numerical simulations [56,57], established qualitative models [58][59][60], and visually measured the PF of ICP preconcentrators under different electrode configurations [61]. Furthermore, the ICP characteristics of one-dimensional nanochannels and the influence of channel geometry on ICP preconcentration have been proved by Ahmed [62] and PetrKovář's group [63], respectively.…”

A Water/Ion Separation Device: Theoretical and Numerical Investigation

“…This method is approached by the Poisson-Nerst-Planck (PNP) theory, which can be less computationally demanding than MD but, on the other hand, it succeeds only at the bulk and cannot incorporate wall effects in regions near the channel walls. At the macroscale, the PNP scheme is a popular choice to explain the relation between the electrostatic problem and the mass transport [12,13].…”