Energy recovery from controlled mixing salt and fresh water with a reverse electrodialysis system

The global potential to obtain clean energy from mixing river water with seawater is considerable. Reverse electrodialysis is a membrane-based technique for direct production of sustainable electricity from controlled mixing of river water and seawater. It has been investigated generally with a focus on obtained power, without taking care of the energy recovery. Optimizing the technology to power output only, would generally give a low energetic efficiency. In the present work, therefore, we emphasized the aspect of energy recovery. No fundamental obstacle exists to achieve an energy recovery of >80%. This number was obtained with taking into account no more than the energetic losses for ionic transport. Regarding the feasibility, it was assumed to be a necessary but not sufficient condition that these internal losses are limited. The internal losses could be minimized by reducing the intermembrane distance, especially from the compartments filled with the low-conducting river water. It was found that a reduction from 0.5 to 0.2 mm indeed could be beneficial, although not to the expected extent. From an evaluation of the internal losses, it was supposed that besides the compartment thickness, also the geometry of the spacer affects the internal resistance.