Tim Orth

ENGW 3302

This article is intended to be published in Popular Mechanics. The article should describe new research
in the field of desalination to an audience that may not know about the mechanics in base-level
desalination. They will be interested in the process from an environmental or humanitarian aspect and
be interested in advancing technology in general.
Researchers at MIT have developed a
process that completely changes the way
we look at the production of clean water.
Tim Orth

Scientists working at MIT have developed a way to turn desalination from a costly way to transform
seawater into drinkable water into an efficient process that produces potable water and valuable
chemicals. By performing a chemical reaction on the process’ waste, the researchers have turned the
main weakness of desalination in another possible benefit. The expensive and potentially dangerous
waste produced by desalination plants can be converted into products that can be sold or used at the
plant.

Why is desalination even important? As global warming causes glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise, and
weather patterns to become more extreme the world’s freshwater supply has started to decrease. In
certain countries, such as South Africa, this led to water rationing. Desalination produces drinkable
water from saltwater—one of the only ways to create new drinkable water.

In most plants, desalination occurs by pushing saltwater through a series of membranes, separating it
into clean water and extremely salty water. While the clean water is sent to the grid to be consumed,
the leftover waste has to be treated, diluted, and pumped back into the ocean. This comes with
economic and ecological costs-- even through expensive dilution and treatment processes the waste is
much more concentrated than the surrounding water. This can harm plankton and algae, causing a
catastrophic chain reaction in the ecosystem.

Scientists at MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) have taken a crucial step to
solving this problem: transforming the waste into two different economically viable products. The salt
in saltwater is made up of the same salt commonly known as table salt-- sodium chloride, or NaCl. The
researchers at J-WAFS have shown that they can run an electric current through the waste and separate
the NaCl and water into hydrochloric acid (HCl) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) in this study1. By doing
this, they remove molecules of salt from the waste and directly convert those molecules into viable
products.

This reaction works because the molecules in salt, sodium and chlorine, are extremely reactive. When
an electric current is run through saltwater, the sodium and chlorine are separated from each other and
exist in the water as ions, or molecules with an electric charge. These ions are attracted to the electric
charges at the electrode or the tank, where the separated ions can react with the water in the tank.
Because these molecules are extremely reactive, they will break water molecules apart to react with
them.

The process occurs after a desalination plant has created a stream of highly concentrated saltwater, or
brine. In their experiment, this waste was subjected to an additional process after it left the main
desalination process. First, the waste was filtered in order to remove any sediment or metals that could
interfere with the process. Second, the waste was pumped into tanks where electrodes separate the
NaCl and H2O in the plant’s waste into HCl and NaOH. These products are separated and captured, and
the rest of the waste produced has a much smaller concentration of salt.

The first product, hydrochloric acid, which is used in many chemical processes and tests. This strong
acid can be used within desalination plants or can be collected and sold to laboratories or chemical
supply companies. In desalination plants, the acid can be used to disinfect water or testing equipment.
Because hydrochloric acid is so commonly used, the plants should have an easy time selling it as a
secondary product to the purified water they produce.

The second product, sodium hydroxide, is a strong base that is also very common in chemical testing or
production. Amit Kumar, one of the researchers, stated that “The desalination industry itself uses quite
a lot of it… [they’re] buying it, spending money on it.” Kumar claims that the plants can cut costs by
producing the chemical themselves and selling any surplus that they produce. Sodium hydroxide is used
to pre-treat water coming into desalination plants. It reduces the acidity of the water and prevents the
internals in the plant from corroding, increasing the processes’ efficiency.

It is easy to stay focused on the economic benefits of these products, but they benefit the ecosystems
near the plant. Because sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid are produced from the main
contaminant of desalination plants’ waste, any amount of these products produced reduces the
contamination released into the environment. The brine produced by desalination plants can be more
than two times as salty as seawater2, and the greater density of brine causes it to quickly drop to the
bottom of the ocean as a cloud. This cloud kills algae and phytoplankton3 and creates something known
as a “dead zone” near the output of the plant. This is an area of water where bacteria have
decomposed a large quantity of dead phytoplankton and algae, causing all the surrounding water to lose
its oxygen. Thoughtful design can counter this problem by making sure that the brine is well-diffused.
Diffusing brine underwater does spread out the brine cloud and make it dissolve more quickly, but it
does nothing to address the total amount of brine produced.

The research from J-WAFS coupled with other research on the improvement of brine disposal could
greatly reduce the impacts of the brine output from a desalination plant. Chemically removing salt to
form sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid allows plants’ waste to have lower salinity concentrations,
and efficient defusal systems can spread that waste throughout a larger area. A smaller quantity and
greater area of the brine cloud works to prevent the formation of the “dead zone” and minimizes the
effect of the plant on the ecosystem.

For decades, desalination was just too costly, economically and ecologically, to be appealing to the
majority of people. But new research into waste treatment may turn this technology from a last resort
into a method that will fight current and future water shortages.
Works Cited:

(Referenced as links. The article wouldn’t have superscripts, these are in case the links are still broken.)

[1] A. Kumar, K. Phillips, G. Thiel, U. Schröder and J. Lienhard, "Direct electrosynthesis of sodium
hydroxide and hydrochloric acid from brine streams", Nature Catalysis, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 106-
113, 2019. Available: 10.1038/s41929-018-0218-y.

[2] J. Arnal, M. Sancho, I. Iborra, J. Gozálvez, A. Santafé and J. Lora, "Concentration of brines from RO
desalination plants by natural evaporation", Desalination, vol. 182, no. 1-3, pp. 435-439, 2005.
Available: 10.1016/j.desal.2005.02.036.

[3] T. Missimer and R. Maliva, "Environmental issues in seawater reverse osmosis desalination: Intakes
and outfalls", Desalination, vol. 434, pp. 198-215, 2018. Available: 10.1016/j.desal.2017.07.012.