Advancing Sustainability with Materials, Membranes & Electrochemistry

Description

Resource recovery and mineral scaling are challenges associated with sustainable wastewater treatment. In this webinar, organised by the IWA Nano & Water Specialist Group, participants heard two presentations on innovative membrane and electrochemical solutions.

The first presentation was on designing novel membrane processes tailored to diverse resource recovery and recycling applications. The speaker will explore how interfacial science, mass transfer, and coordination chemistry can be harnessed to develop advanced membranes and membrane-based processes for enhanced resource recovery. Through three illustrative examples, the speaker will demonstrate how innovative membrane materials and electrochemically driven technologies can be precisely engineered for applications at the food-water-energy nexus.

The second presentation was on the application of alternating electric fields to prevent mineral crystallisation. The speaker introduced the electrical double-layer charging and ion migration in the bulk, discuss the disruption of calcium carbonate precipitation at alternating potentials, and propose a mechanistic model on how ion migration can disrupt the nucleation and growth of calcite crystals. The technique has the potential to prevent mineral crystal formation in heat exchangers and many other industrially relevant systems.