Effect of environmental temperature and applied potential on water desalination performance using electrodialysis

Desalination of brackish water is a challenging task for higher recovery of water. In most of the cases, water recovery is low with high wastage. Electrodialysis (ED) provides a solution of water desalination with high recovery. Ion-exchange membranes are the main component for electrodialysis system. Here cation-exchange membrane and anion-exchange membrane were synthesized by free-radical polymerization for water desalination by ED. ATR-FTIR confirms the successful functionalization of the membranes and scanning electron microscopy technique reveals the dense morphology of the membranes. Here we used polyethylene as a binder and blow film extrusion for film formation, which is not only economically viable as well as large amount of membranes can be produced without using hazardous solvent. The desalination study reveals the improvement in desalination performance with slight increment in temperature which may be due to higher ionic mobility. The mechanical and thermal stability of the membranes was characterized to ensure the viability of membranes for desalination at higher temperatures. Effect of applied potential was also studied in the removal of pathogens during desalination and confirmed that 2 V/cell pair applied potential removes almost 97% pathogens during desalination in continuous mode.