About the team

The team composed of two partners:
First team - the UAE team: composed three faculty members and a senior student from the department of chemical engineering at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), three faculty members from the civil engineering department at the AUS, and a faculty member from the UAE University.
Second team - the US team: composed of three faculty from the University of Columbia and two senior students as researchers

Technical Information

We propose a framework that can convert desalination reject brine to salable construction materials and disinfectants. The key steps are shown in Fig. 1 and each step is explained in detail in the following section. The process starts with concentrating waste brine from desalination plants by employing innovative techniques such as temperature swing solvent extraction and membrane distillation, yielding fresh product water at the same time (Step I). Next, we produce acid and base, specifically hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide, from brine by employing novel membranless electrolyzers or bipolar ion-exchange membranes (Step II). The generated sodium hydroxide is then applied to elevate the pH of the highly concentrated brine to precipitate Ca/Mg minerals (Step III), which will then be used for concrete processing (Step IV). Additionally, chloride ions remaining in the brine are electrochemically oxidized to produce disinfectants of chlorine and hypochlorite, and any residual brine will be further dewatered to zero liquid discharge.

About Team Leader

Team members