TY - GEN
T1 - Feasibility study of an electrodialysis system for in-home water desalination and purification in urban India
AU - Nayar, Kishor G.
AU - Sundararaman, Prithiviraj
AU - Schacherl, Jeffrey D.
AU - O'Connor, Catherine L.
AU - Heath, Michael L.
AU - Gabriel, Mario Orozco
AU - Wright, Natasha C.
AU - Winter, Amos G.
PY - 2015/1/1
Y1 - 2015/1/1
N2 - Desalination of high salinity water is an effective way of improving the aesthetic quality of drinking water and has been demonstrated to be a characteristic valued by consumers. Across India, 60% of the groundwater, the primary water source for millions, is brackish or contains a high salt content with total dissolved solids (TDS) ranging from 500 parts per million (ppm) to 3,000ppm. The government does not provide sufficient desalination treatment before the water reaches the tap of a consumer. Therefore consumers have turned to in-home desalination. However, current products are either expensive or have low recovery, product water output per untreated feed water, (∼30%) wasting water resources. Electrodialysis (ED) is a promising technology that desalinates water while maintaining higher recovery (up to 95%) compared to existing consumer reverse osmosis (RO) products. This paper first explores the in-home desalination market to determine critical design requirements for an in-home ED system. A model was then used to evaluate and optimize the performance of an ED stack at this scale and designated salinity range. Additionally, testing was conducted in order to validate the model and demonstrate feasibility. Finally, cost estimates of the proposed in-home ED system and product design concept are presented. The results of this work identified a system design that provides consumers with up to 80% recovery of feed water with cost and size competitive to currently available in-home RO products.
AB - Desalination of high salinity water is an effective way of improving the aesthetic quality of drinking water and has been demonstrated to be a characteristic valued by consumers. Across India, 60% of the groundwater, the primary water source for millions, is brackish or contains a high salt content with total dissolved solids (TDS) ranging from 500 parts per million (ppm) to 3,000ppm. The government does not provide sufficient desalination treatment before the water reaches the tap of a consumer. Therefore consumers have turned to in-home desalination. However, current products are either expensive or have low recovery, product water output per untreated feed water, (∼30%) wasting water resources. Electrodialysis (ED) is a promising technology that desalinates water while maintaining higher recovery (up to 95%) compared to existing consumer reverse osmosis (RO) products. This paper first explores the in-home desalination market to determine critical design requirements for an in-home ED system. A model was then used to evaluate and optimize the performance of an ED stack at this scale and designated salinity range. Additionally, testing was conducted in order to validate the model and demonstrate feasibility. Finally, cost estimates of the proposed in-home ED system and product design concept are presented. The results of this work identified a system design that provides consumers with up to 80% recovery of feed water with cost and size competitive to currently available in-home RO products.
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U2 - 10.1115/DETC201547613
DO - 10.1115/DETC201547613
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84978954655
T3 - Proceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference
BT - 41st Design Automation Conference
PB - American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
T2 - ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC/CIE 2015
Y2 - 2 August 2015 through 5 August 2015
ER -
