Daniel here,
As I mentioned in our last Monday meeting, we have made several attempts these past couple weeks at incorporating sodium alginate and chitosan solutes in our ion exchange polymer membranes, as well as an onslaught of attempts to coat those membranes flat on our activated carbon electrodes.
We have since gone through some literature, troubleshooting our ion exchange polymer compositions and have altered the ratios and compositions for our sodium alginate and chitosan membranes. Although we are still having issues getting a flat coat, we now have testable samples for compositions of both sodium alginate and chitosan.
[Activated carbon electrode coated with one of our poly(vinyl alcohol) membrane formulas laced with chitosan]
I’m glad to say we can finally move on to the testing stages with these two. The successful samples will be characterized using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. They will then be placed in our MCDI cell setup for performance testing. Hopefully, we will see some great energy efficiency, along with selective ion removal. My mentor just returned from an international research summit abroad, however, and from what I understand, ionic selectivity is very optimistic. Though, I suppose I’ve gotten used to the periodic bounce back to the drawing board now.
KMS-1 has been shelved for the moment. The idea has been more than promising, but we may not have the equipment available here at Rice to pursue the possibility of KMS-CDI. I have not forgotten it though. If I get the opportunity, I will definitely try it out.
Best of luck to everyone preparing for the symposium!
More soon.
-Daniel S. Cana