Microbe Battery Powers Desalination Process For Produced Water

A new wastewater treatment process created by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder may provide a cheaper way to desalinate produced water from oil and gas sites.

The process relies on a microbe-powered battery, producing energy during the treatment process, according to research published in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.

"[The] microbial capacitive desalination cell offers the possibility that water could be more economically treated on site and reused for fracking," according to a release from the school.

Zhiyong Jason Ren, a CU-Boulder associate professor of environmental and sustainability engineering and senior author of the paper, explained the significance of the findings.

“The beauty of the technology is that it tackles two different problems in one single system,” Ren said, per the release. “The problems become mutually beneficial in our system—they complement each other—and the process produces energy rather than just consumes it.”

How does the process work?

"Just like oil and natural gas, the contaminants in the wastewater produced in gathering these materials contains energy-rich hydrocarbons. Through the consumption of the contaminants, microbes are used to release the energy embedded in these contaminants, generating an electrical current that is used to power the desalination process," Gizmag reported.

The process creates a battery that manipulates the salty substances in the water.

"The energy produced by the microbes is used to create a battery, with a positively charged electrode on one side of the cell, and a negatively charged electrode on the other. Since salt dissolves into positively and negatively charged ions in water, which are attracted to and adhere to the respective electrodes, it is possible to remove the salt from the wastewater in what the researchers call microbial capacitive desalination," Gizmag reported.

The researchers are already working to commercialize the technology.

"[They] have co-founded a startup company called BioElectric Inc. In order to determine if the technology offers a viable solution for oil and gas companies, the pair first has to show they can scale up the work they’ve been doing in the lab to a size that would be useful in the field," the release said.

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