Chicago Water Week: The growing water innovation ecosystem
Chicago Water Week is an annual tradition exploring innovative water research and technologies that address climate challenges and resource recovery. (Photo by Arun Antony)
This week is Chicago Water Week, an annual tradition focused on the essential role that water plays in our environment, communities, and economy, as well as the impact of the changing climate on our region’s water resources.
Last year, Prof. Junhong Chen of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) took a leading role in the unprecedented Chicago-based Great Lakes ReNEW coalition, which has a central mission of recycling used water to create a new clean water resource, as well as using the contaminants to build clean energy batteries.
Other efforts include exploring innovative methods for separating and extracting valuable minerals from wastewater, seawater, and groundwater—technologies that could play a key role in securing the materials necessary for batteries, solar panels, and other energy systems.
In honor of the event, read more about the impact that UChicago PME is having on the many different facets of water research.
Study explains why more water is not always better in ion-conducting membranes
Combining simulations and experimental data let PME researchers build a picture of how negatively charged anions (yellow) and positively charged cations (blue) interact with water molecules (red and white) and the polymer backbone of anion exchange membranes (gray). (Image courtesy of Ge Sun)
Researchers at UChicago PME and at the Tandon School of Engineering of New York University have made a breakthrough in understanding how water transports charged ions across a critical component in clean energy technologies like fuel cells and redox flow batteries.
While scientists previously thought this component, called an anion exchange membrane (AEM), required high levels of free-flowing water, which can weaken the structure of the membranes over time. The new study, however, suggests that fast ion transport does not require high levels of free water.
Instead, AEMs can be optimized by using only enough water to create well-connected networks of water molecules within the membrane while also ensuring a dynamic shell of water around the ions. The new research was published in Nature Communications.
UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Asst. Prof. Chong Liu, right, is creating new methods of lithium extraction that can be applied directly into water sources with minimum pretreatment. (Photo by John Zich)
Extracting lithium from Australian mines, Chilean brine pools or clay deposits underneath Nevada, can be a painfully slow, expensive and environmentally damaging process. But batteries powering everything from smartphones to energy storage for wind farms and solar fields demand the metallic element.
UChicago PME Asst. Prof. Chong Liu is developing better ways to not only supply high quantities of lithium, but to do so in an environmentally friendly way.
By researching the physical and chemical processes at solid-liquid interfaces for sustainable separation, Liu has created new ways to separate dilute ions from the water. This could be used to pull lithium, rare earth elements and other scarce materials directly from water – no mining or brine evaporation needed.
In a new paper published in Nature Catalysis, a research team from the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering’s Amanchukwu Lab outlined a way to manipulate water molecules to make carbon dioxide reduction more efficient, with the ultimate goal of creating a clean energy loop. From left, PhD candidates Hannah Fejzić and Reggie Gomes and postdoctoral scholars Ritesh Kumar and Bidushi Sarkar. (Photo provided by Reggie Gomes)
A byproduct of burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere from car exhaust and coal-fired power plants. Even some renewable energy resources produce a small amount of carbon dioxide, although at a tiny fraction of the amount coal and natural gas create.
At its core, this molecule is just an arrangement of one carbon and two oxygen atoms that can be reorganized through a process called electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction (CO2R) into clean fuels and useful chemicals. But the process is often done at a loss, with competing processes pulling the atoms in unwanted directions that create unwanted byproducts.
In a paper published in Nature Catalysis, researchers from the UChicago PME’s Amanchukwu Lab outlined a way to manipulate water molecules to make CO2R more efficient, with the ultimate goal of creating a clean energy loop.
