Desalination, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6Electrodialysis Desalination

Jae-Hwan Choi¹, Hong-Joo Lee² and Seung-Hyeon Moon³*

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, Kongju National University, Cheonan 31080, Korea

²Department of Bioenergy Science and Technology, Chonnam National University, Gwangju 61186, Korea

³School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), 123 Cheomdan-gwagiro, Buk-gu, Gwangju 61005, Korea

*Corresponding author: [e-mail]

Abstract

Desalination processes involve the separation of nearly salt-free fresh water from seawater or brackish water and they can be classified with thermal or membrane process. Electrodialysis (ED), a desalination process where the electrically charged salt ions are separated through ion exchange membranes, has been considered as one of the promising desalination processes in many areas from feeds such as sea-water and brackish water, wastewater, industrial waste streams, etc.

Especially, ED has already been practiced successfully for decades as an energy-efficient process and the technical and economical feasibility is well proven especially for salt production and desalination of brackish water compared with reverse osmosis (RO). Meanwhile, the drawbacks in ED desalination are high energy consumption due to electrical resistance of ion transfer though membranes and decreasing process performance at high salt concentrations.

The ED desalination process performance and economic feasibility can increase membrane ...