Spontaneous Membrane Ionic Transfer

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For the desalination of industrial brines and sea water, the most advanced technologies today are the concentration by distillation, the reverse osmosis and the electro dialysis. In the first two cases it is concentration systems: in addition to a very high energy consumption, they originate concentrated brines very problematic to dispose of, both in the case of industrial brines and in desalination of sea water treatments. The electro dialysis, separating the hydrolyzed salts into its anion and cation components, instead allows the total recovery of the saline solution and the production of concentrated brines or basic chemicals, but it has very high operating costs due to the use of induced electric fields. The objective is to achieve the best performing and environmentally friendly technologies to meet increasingly stringent environmental requirements, developing systems with low operating costs and able to recycle the waste. The market requires the development of desalination techniques at low cost and low power consumption, capable of increasing the resilience of solutions reducing as much as possible (and eventually eliminating) wastes derived from concentrated brines.

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HTE’s Solution

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Given the technical advantages deriving from the electro dialysis, HTE has developed a new system with passive ion pump able to operate as an electro dialysis cell, without the need for electrical power. The SPID system can be powered by a hybrid, by means of electricity or reformed hydrocarbons.

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By operating in the regime of electroneutrality, the power consumption in case of electrical power supply are approximately 1/8 compared to reverse osmosis, producing even a surplus of electrical energy in the case of reformed hydrocarbons (equal to 12 kWh per cubic meter of desalinated sea water).