Functional Materials for FEW applications

Abstract:

We are living in “a world on the edge” with more than 25 % of our global population living with dangerous levels of food insecurity, and the same fraction living in water stressed areas with roughly 1 in 10 persons in the world lacking access to even safe drinking water. This is being compounded with the need for accessible green energy that can reduce the CO₂ burden for the sustainable growth across the globe.

Over the past decade Functional NanoMaterials (FNM) group has focused in the FEW (Food-Energy-Water) nexus, including sustainable coatings, green hydrogen production and water cleaning. The core-competence of the group is in the ability to design and fabricate nanostructured materials tailored for specific applications in devices targeting engineering solutions for “Planetcare”. From the outset, FNM strategy has been in the understanding of fundamental science for technology development well grounded in reality and practicality, focusing on research that has the potential to be transformed into an application.

In this talk we will introduce our work in electrocatalytic water treatment, mainly capacitive desalination, and our newly developed membrane-free water electrolysis for green-hydrogen production. The science behind the success of the spiral flow-through Capacitive deionization (CDI) technology,[1] an upcoming desalination process, that is positioned to provide cost-effective, low carbon footprint water treatment will be presented. Learning from these capacitive devices, we have recently developed an unique, completely membrane-free decoupled hydrogen production process by splitting water ,[2] universally operating in either the acidic or alkaline conditions. In either cases, the role of the functional materials and properties for achieving the desired results will be highlighted.

 

[1] Johan Nordstrand, Karthik Laxman, Joydeep Dutta, Long-term durability of commercial capacitive deionization modules, Desalination,Volume 576, 2024, 117377, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2024.117377

[2] Esteban A Toledo-Carrillo, Mario García-Rodríguez, Lorena M. Sánchez-Moreno, Joydeep Dutta, Decoupled Supercapacitive Electrolyzer for Membrane-Free Water Splitting, 2024, Science Advances (in press)