This Innovation Corps project will enable focused research by the proposed team to help bring the proposed Electrochemical Desalination Cell (EDC) to the market. EDC desalinates brine waste while producing electricity, synthesizing valuable inorganic chemicals, and consuming carbon dioxide. The I-Corps PI's previous NSF awards investigate the structure property relationships of nanomaterials in energy conversion devices. The first demonstration of the EDC was complete in through previous research, and proved the thermodynamic feasibility of the device.
The primary research goal for this project is to achieve power densities and desalination rates an order of magnitude higher than that obtained from the initial prototype. If successful, the proposed technology has the potential to create a sustainable business through an industrial ecological approach that combines energy generation, brine treatment and chemical synthesis into a single, integrated process.
Award Number:1237241 Project Title: I-Corps: An Electrochemical Desalination Cell Activities: During the course of this study we continued to develop our technology and worked on our business model canvass. The catalyst activities involved the development of catalysts that could carry out the electrochemical reactions in alkaline conditions. My research group was working in parallel in this activity and we were looking for ways that this technology could be utilized in the Electrochemical Desalination Cell. 1. Development of Core Shell Catalysts in alkaline media. We developed a platinum-free catalyst with a unique core-shell structure; the thin shell is palladium, the core silver. This allows for higher catalytic activity and greater tolerance for impurities than standard platinum-based catalysts. Particles coated with palladium cover the surface of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, promoting the reduction of oxygen over the oxidation of alcohol, facilitating desirable chemical reactions. The research results show that silver-palladium multi-walled carbon nanotubes are promising platinum-free cathode catalysts with desirable properties for oxygen reduction, as well as improved tolerance to methanol and ethanol. Tolerance to alcohol is important due to fuel crossover in the fuel cell, which occurs by the diffusion across the membrane. The effort resulted in the following recent publication: R.C. Sekol, X. Li, P. Cohen, G. Doubek, M. Carmo, and A.D. Taylor (2013), Silver Palladium Core-Shell Electrocatalyst Supported on MWNTs for ORR in Alkaline Media, Applied Catalysis B-Environmental, 138–139, 285–293. 2. Establishment of Alkaline Fuel Cell operation conditions. We developed techniques and protocols for working with alkaline fuel cell systems that have not been established in the literature. Recognizing that our desalination system uses alkaline membranes, this activity was necessary for our I-Corps effort. The electrochemical desalination cell architecture benefitted from the finding in our methods study. In this effort we varied the following input parameters: catalyst loading, assembly torque, temperature, activation protocol. We then put together model on how these parameters affected the overall device performance. The effort resulted in the following recent publication: M. Carmo, G. Doubek, R.C. Sekol, M. Linardi, and A.D. Taylor (2013), Development and electrochemical studies of membrane electrode assemblies for polymer electrolyte alkaline fuel cells using FAA-3 membrane and ionomer, Journal of Power Sources, 230, 169–175. In our Business Model Canvass, we decided to operate under the following scenario: As if we are producing the EDC and selling to plants as a product, either an add-on or something else As if we are producing, installing and operating the EDC as a service for the plants and selling the chemicals etc. As if we are developing the EDC and then licensing the technology to other companies to manufacture and install and sell products/services in return for a royalty Findings: On the research side one of the major roadblocks that we came across is the challenge with anion exchange membranes that we did not anticipate. This technology is well established in desalination systems that rely on a continuous flux based on an applied bias. However this does not work well when the bias is based on the internal potentails set up by the electrochemical reaction. In particulare the efforts by Mustain* and others on the effects of possible contaminants on electrochemical reactions could shed more light on improving this these systems. *J.A. Vega and W.E. Mustain, Effect of CO2, HCO3-, and CO32-, on oxygen reduction in anion exchange membrane fuel cells, Electrochemica Acta 55 (2010), 1638-1644. The other major finding is the poor durability of existing anion exchange membranes used in fuel cell applications. Hopefully our recent publication in Journal of Power Sources will motivate others to develop better membranes in this field. For the business model canvass, our approach was to pursue the 3rd option, but in order to do so we needed to understand the first two options. The only way we will get a favorable licensing agreement is if we have done enough customer research during product development so that we know that we have a product that can be sold profitably. Then the decision basically comes down to: 1)Who is going to build it? and 2)Who is going to run it? These are essentially questions about how to scale up, not how to build the initial product. Conclusions: In conclusion, although the barriers to entry into our intended market were too high for this technology, we did learn a significant amount in regards to the process of identifying customers for an intended technology. We will apply these techniques towards our next venture.
