Engineers develop technology to pull specific contaminants from drinking and wastewater, pipelines

August 6, 2018, Rice University

Rice University scientists are developing technology to remove contaminants from water—but only as many as necessary.

The Rice lab of engineer Qilin Li is building a treatment system that can be tuned to selectively pull toxins from drinking water and wastewater from factories, sewage systems and oil and gas wells. The researchers said their technology will cut costs and save energy compared to conventional systems.

"Traditional methods to remove everything, such as reverse osmosis, are expensive and energy intensive," said Li, the lead scientist and co-author of a study about the new technology in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology. "If we figure out a way to just fish out these minor components, we can save a lot of energy."

The heart of Rice's system is a set of novel composite electrodes that enable capacitive deionization. The charged, porous electrodes selectively pull target ions from fluids passing through the maze-like system. When the pores get filled with toxins, the electrodes can be cleaned, restored to their original capacity and reused.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-technology-specific-contaminants-wastewater-pipelines.html#jCp