Tracing the impact of stack configuration on interface resistances in reverse electrodialysis by in situ electrochemical impedance spectroscopy

Highlights

• RED performance and stack resistance were studied by EIS and LSV.

• Interface resistance were discriminated from Ohmic resistance by EIS.

• Impacts of spacer shadow effect and concentration polarization were analyzed.

• Ionic short current reduced the power density for more cell pairs.

• The results enabled to predict RED performance with different configurations.

Abstract

Reverse electrodialysis (RED) is an emerging membrane-based technology for the production of renewable energy from mixing waters with different salinities. Herein, the impact of the stack configuration on the Ohmic and non-Ohmic resistances as well as the performance of RED were systematically studied by using in situ electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Three different parameters (membrane type, number of cell pairs and spacer design) were controlled. The Ohmic and non-Ohmic resistances were evaluated for RED stacks equipped with two types of commercial membranes (Type I and Type II) supplied by Fujifilm Manufacturing Europe B.V: Type I Fuji membranes displayed higher Ohmic and non-Ohmic resistances than Type II membranes, which was mainly attributed to the difference in fixed charge density. The output power of the stack was observed to decrease with the increasing number of cell pairs mainly due to the increase in ionic shortcut currents. With the reduction in spacer thickness from 750 to 200 µm, the permselectivity of membranes in the stack decreased from 0.86 to 0.79 whereas the energy efficiency losses increased from 31% to 49%. Overall, the output of the present study provides a basis for understanding the impact of stack design on internal losses during the scaling-up of RED.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Reverse electrodialysis / Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy / Concentration polarization / Spacer shadow effect

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from Tianjin Enterprise Science and Technology Commissioner Project (No. 19JCTPJC46900), Tianjin Municipal Education Commission Research Plan Projects (Nos.2018KJ161 and TJPU2k20170112), Tianjin Chengjian University research fund (No. 180501412), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFC1903203), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China (2020CDJQY-A017), and Chongqing Technological Innovation and Application Development Project (No. cstc2019jscx-tjsbX0002). The work described in this paper was also partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region, China (No. C7051-17G). Tao Lei from Metrohm China is also gratefully acknowledged for providing useful information about Metrohm Autolab potensiostat. The financial support of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions IF Grant agreement (No. 748683) is gratefully acknowledged.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-021-1480-9 and is accessible for authorized users.

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