A critical need exists for development of low cost, low maintenance technologies for the removal of salt and other contaminants from waters that are to be used for domestic, agricultural and industrial purposes. Interest in the use of the electrochemical technology of capacitive deionisation (CDI) for this purpose has increased dramatically in recent years with the Waite group at UNSW active in both laboratory and pilot-scale investigations of these technologies.
School
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Research Area
water treatment | contaminant removal | resource recovery
- Research environment
- Expected outcomes
- Supervisory team
- Reference material/links
The Waite Group is made up of higher degree research students, post-doctoral research associates and process engineers with team members located at both UNSW Sydney and at the UNSW Centre for Transformational Environmental Technologies (CTET) at Yixing in Jiangsu Province, China. This team undertakes strategic and applied research at both laboratory and pilot-scale with, in many instances, close engagement with industry partners. Studies range from development and manufacture of improved electrodes, optimisation of the CDI process using machine learning based approaches and development and use of renewable energy to power the water treatment technology.
The ToR student will contribute to research activities at either (or both) laboratory and pilot scale of CDI-related desalination technologies with expected outcomes including co-authorship of peer-reviewed publications in high impact international journals, patents of new technologies and/or industry reports.
A variety of CDI-related outputs by the Waite Group over the last year or so is provided at the links below:
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c03477
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2023.116647
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2022.119349
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2023.120273
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.desal.2021.115482
- https://forms.unsw.edu.au/system/files/webform/eng_advertise_a_phd_project/47972/MCDI%20brochure.pdf