Synthetic salt water desalination by electrodialysis using reinforced ion exchange membranes for acid–base production

The demand for clean water is vast, whether it is used for human consumption, agricultural activities or industrial applications. To find a solution for this important issue, a small attempt has been made in the present work towards developing reinforced monopolar and bipolar membranes based on functionalized polysulfone and evaluated for electrodialysis of salt water. Polyvinyl pyrrollidone was used as the intermediate layer for the preparation of the bipolar membrane. The concentration of salt water taken for the bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BPMED) process ranged from 5 to 25 g/L. A commercially procured monopolar and bipolar membranes made of polystyrene divinyl benzene was also evaluated for the purpose of comparison. The BPMED performance reached a highest current efficiency of 75.8 and 53.6 % with the energy consumption of 0.36 and 1.39 Wh for the synthesized and commercial membranes respectively. Also the performance of the fabricated unit was assessed in terms of electrical conductivity, salinity and ion (sodium and chloride) concentrations in the feed solution after 8 h duration. The reproducibility performance of the membranes was also analyzed for various concentrations of the synthetic salt solution.