An Investigation of Osmotic Energy Conversion Using Nanochannel Membranes Reconstructed by Two-dimensional Materials

Abstract

Renewable energy plays a key role in the development of harvesting sustainable energy from natural resources Reverse electrodialysis (RED) is a potential method to generate energy from renewable energy sources such as seawater RED is based on Gibbs free energy of mixing on different salt concentration between seawater and freshwater (known as blue energy) In this study two-dimensional materials such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) and graphene oxide (GO) are arranged layer by layer to fabricate high ion-selective membranes containing nanochannels for harvesting the blue energy Two major objectives of this work are: first to study the difference in ionic transport phenomena when the membranes are placed by using horizontal (in-plane) and vertical (out-of-plane) setup and second to compare power generation performance between MoS2 and GO membranes on RED The result shows that the power generation of the horizontal transport is 0 628 W/m^2 which is 110 times higher than that of vertical transport The power density of MoS2-membrane is 1 7 times higher than that of GO-membrane The energy harvesting efficiency of MoS2-membrane is better than GO-membrane under the high concentration conditions Overall this work shows the potential application of the 2D-materials to harvest the blue energy using RED The development of a highly efficient ion-selective membrane and its durability should be further studied for RED

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Ruey-Jen Yang (Supervisor)