title: A Method for Seawater Desalination via Squeezing Ionic Hydrogels.
abstract: In this study, mechanical force applied to squeeze poly(sodium acrylate-co-2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) hydrogels that contained seawater in order to obtain fresh water. By incorporating ionic monomer sodium acrylate (SA) into hydrogels, the salt rejection was significantly enhanced from 27.62% to 64.57% (feed concentration 35.00g/L NaCl solution). As SA's concentration continuously increased, salt rejection declined due to the change in hydrogel's matrix structure. Therefore, water recovery raised as the current swelling degree increased. We also measured pore size distribution by applying mercury intrusion porosimetry on each hydrogel sample in the interest of finding out whether the sample SA5/HEMA15 owned multi pore structure, since the result could be good for the desalination performance. After 4 times reused, the hydrogel remained good desalination performance. Although compared to reverse osmosis (RO) and multistage flash distillation (MSF) & multiple effect distillation (MED) the salt rejection of this hydrogel (roughly 64%) seemed low, the hydrogels can be used for forward osmosis and reverse osmosis, as pretreatment of seawater to reduce the energy consumption for the downstream.
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Enhanced Heat Transfer and Energy Conservation of Education Ministry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510640, China.
authors.forename: Chi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Enhanced Heat Transfer and Energy Conservation of Education Ministry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510640, China.
authors.forename: Yanhong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Enhanced Heat Transfer and Energy Conservation of Education Ministry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510640, China.
authors.forename: Xuemei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lang
authors.affiliation: Key Lab of Enhanced Heat Transfer and Energy Conservation of Education Ministry, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510640, China.
authors.forename: Shuanshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fan
mesh_terms: D020100:Hydrogels; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D009995:Osmosis; D012623:Seawater / Q000737:chemistry; D012965:Sodium Chloride / Q000737:chemistry; D018508:Water Purification
chemical_list: D020100:Hydrogels; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D012965:Sodium Chloride