Evaluation of Desalination by Nanostructured Hydrate Formation and Pellet Production Process

A desalination of brine solution was applied using formation and pellet production process of nanostructured gas hydrates. In the pellet production process, gas hydrate slurries were formed under thermodynamic condition and then the slurries were continuously produced and pelletized to extract hydrate pellets from the reactor by a squeezing operation of a dual cylinder unit. Before and after hydrate process, each cations (Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+) were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES). A real-time Raman spectrometer was also used to identify nanostructured CO2 hydrate formation. The maximum removal efficiency of dissolved ions was 80% in the single stage of hydrate-based desalination process without any pretreatment. This result shows that the excellent desalination efficiencies by gas hydrate-based process were not dependent to the salt concentration of feed solutions. Therefore, we believe that it can be applied for any water purification process such as seawater desalination and wastewater treatments.