Photo-Assisted Rechargeable Battery Desalination

Karthick Ramalingam; Qiang Wei; Ganguli Babu; Yuchao Zhu; Minxian Han; Yidong Xiao; Mengjun Liang; Zhuosheng Jiang; Than Zaw Oo; Su Htike Aung; Fuming Chen

doi:10.1021/acsami.2c07310

Photo-Assisted Rechargeable Battery Desalination

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2022 Jul 13;14(27):30907-30913. doi: 10.1021/acsami.2c07310. Epub 2022 Jun 30.

Authors

Karthick Ramalingam^{1

2}, Qiang Wei^{1

2}, Ganguli Babu³, Yuchao Zhu^{1

2}, Minxian Han^{1

2}, Yidong Xiao^{1

2}, Mengjun Liang^{1

2}, Zhuosheng Jiang^{1

2}, Than Zaw Oo^{4

5}, Su Htike Aung⁴, Fuming Chen^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Electronics and Information Engineering, South China Normal University, Foshan 528225, P. R. China.
² Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Quantum Engineering and Quantum Materials, School of Physics and Telecommunication Engineering, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510006, P. R. China.
³ Department of Materials Science and Nano Engineering, Department Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Department of Chemistry, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, United States.
⁴ Department of Physics, Materials Research Laboratory, University of Mandalay, 05032 Mandalay, Myanmar.
⁵ Universities' Research Centre, University of Yangon, Yangon 11041, Myanmar.

PMID: 35772123
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c07310

Abstract

Herein, we propose a novel design of photo-assisted battery desalination, which provides the tri-function within a single device including the photo-assisted charge (electrical energy saving), energy storage, and desalination (salt removal). The photoelectrode (N719/TiO₂) is directly integrated into the zinc-iodide (Zn-I) battery with the desalination stream in the middle portion of the device. This architecture can provide a reduced energy consumption up to 50%, an energy output of 42 W h mol^-1_NaCl, and a desalination rate of 13 μg/cm² min^-1. This work is significant for the inter-discipline study of the redox flow energy storage and energy-saving desalination.

Keywords: battery desalination; dye-sensitized solar cell; photo-battery; solar charging; zinc-iodide battery.