Renewable energy can be generated when mixing seawater and river water. This energy is captured in reverse electrodialysis (RED) using ion exchange membranes. Although natural sources of seawater and river water are composed of a mixture of monovalent and multivalent ions, laboratory research on RED is generally performed with artificial solutions of sodium chloride. This research demonstrates that the presence of magnesium- and sulphate ions in feed solutions with NaCl has a major effect on the obtained open circuit voltage and power density for three different membrane types. When using a mixture with a molar fraction of 10% MgSO₄ and 90% of NaCl in both feed waters, the experimentally obtained power density in steady state decreases from 29% to 50% compared to the case where the feed solutions contain only NaCl as a salt. This effect is among others explained by the transport of Mg²⁺ and SO₄ ²⁻ against their concentration gradient, as is elaborated in a theoretical framework and which is justified by experimental data. Non-stationary cases, where feed water is switched from a NaCl solution to a mixture of NaCl and MgSO₄, show that the voltage response time is in the order of tens of minutes up to several hours, due to ion exchange between the membranes and the feed water. The knowledge gained from electrochemical measurements under stationary and non-stationary conditions and a novel technique to monitor the ion transport inside cation exchange membranes can be used to improve the obtained power density in practical applications of RED using natural feed water.

Capacitive reverse electrodialysis (CRED) is a newly proposed technology to generate electricity from mixing of salt water and fresh water (salinity gradient energy) by using a membrane pile as in reverse electrodialysis (RED) and capacitive electrodes. The salinity difference between salt water and fresh water generates a potential difference over ion selective membranes, which can be used as a renewable power source. The strength and unique characteristic of CRED in comparison to the other technologies is that it allows multiple membrane cells between a single set of electrodes and at the same time avoids redox reactions using capacitive electrodes. The capacitive electrodes use activated carbon on a support of Ti/Pt mesh to store ions and their charge. A periodic switching of the feed waters, combined with a switching of the direction of the electric current, ensures that the capacitive electrodes do not get saturated. The large membrane pile enables the electrodes to be charged more than in previous approaches for capacitive mixing. As a consequence, the energy cycle of CRED has a larger range in both voltage and accumulated charge compared to previous capacitive mixing technologies. The power density obtainable with CRED stacks with capacitive electrodes is an order of magnitude higher than in previous attempts for capacitive energy extraction and close to or even better than similar RED stacks with conventional redox based electrode systems. CRED is considered to be a stable, safe, clean and high performing technology to obtain energy from mixing of salt water and fresh water.

In this study, we prepared electrospun polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers functionalized with dibenzo-18-crown-6 (DB18C6) crown ether and showed the potential of these fibers for the selective recovery of K⁺ from other both mono- and divalent ions in aqueous solutions. Nanofibers were characterized by SEM, FTIR and TGA. SEM results showed that the crown ether addition resulted in thicker nanofibers and higher mean fiber diameters, in a range of 138 to 270 nm. Batch adsorption experiments were conducted in order to evaluate the potential of the crown ether modified nanofibers as an adsorbent for ion removal. The maximum adsorption capacity of the crown ether modified nanofibers for K⁺ was 0.37 mmol g⁻¹ and the nanofibers followed the selectivity sequence of K⁺ > Ba²⁺ > Na⁺ ∼ Li⁺ for single ion experiments. Adsorption of Ba²⁺ ions onto crown ether-modified nanofiber was examined by XPS and the results confirmed the adsorption of the ion. Mixed ion adsorption experiments revealed competitive adsorption between K⁺ and Ba²⁺ ions for the available binding sites. This effect was not observed for the other monovalent ions present in the solution and exceptionally high selectivities for K⁺ over Li⁺ and Na⁺ were obtained. Also the crown ether modified nanofibers exhibited good regeneration properties and a good reusability over multiple consecutive adsorption–desorption cycles. Electrospinning is thus shown to be a very versatile tool to prepare crown ether functional polymer adsorbents for the selective recovery of ions.