An Adsorption Reverse Electrodialysis system for the generation of electricity from low-grade heat

A novel process is presented to generate electricity from low-grade heat by combining a Reverse Electrodialysis membrane with an Adsorption desalinator in a closed-loop system. A Reverse Electrodialysis membrane generates electricity by controlled mixing of two salt solutions of different concentrations. An Adsorption desalinator restores the initial salt gradient by utilising low-grade heat for the separation. In this study the process is designed from optimising the salt and material selection to the development of the real system application. Energy and exergy efficiencies of the proposed system show the potential of this novel renewable energy technology. The efficiencies of 227 salts with a range of different valences and 10 adsorption materials have been investigated over a large number of system parameters. The results show that the optimised system can achieve an exergy efficiency of up to 30%. Moreover, high salt concentrations do not significantly increase the specific energy consumption of the Adsorption desalinator, which allows operating the Reverse Electrodialysis membrane at the optimal salt concentrations.