Efficiency improvements are needed in thermal desalination technologies to reduce their cost and emissions. We can examine a broad range of such innovations through the technology membrane distillation (MD), which is especially energy efficient configuration at high salinity. We examine several material innovations in MD configurations, including thermal conductivity improvements and enhancing condensation with hydrophobic and wicking designs. These systems have complex trade-offs in performance, because of the conflicting goals of improving mass transfer while avoiding conductive losses. Numerical modeling and experimental results show that large efficiency enhancements, even doubling efficiency, is possible over state-of-the art systems using enhanced materials, including copper oxide and carbon nanomaterials. Similar approaches can be applied to many other thermal desalination technologies as well.
David Warsinger an Assistant Professor at Purdue University in Mechanical Engineering. David’s research focuses on the water-energy nexus, with approaches from thermofluids and nanoengineering, including desalination, water-energy systems integration, membrane nanomaterials, and nanoscale membrane physics. David completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at MIT (2012-2015), and his B.S. and M.Eng at Cornell (2006-2010), and did Postdoctoral research at MIT and Yale. David is also actively involved in advising, fundraising, and consulting for several startup companies. David is a coauthor of over 60 scientific contributions, comprising journal papers, conference papers, patents, and book chapters. Notable awards David has earned include MIT technology review’s 35 Innovators under 35, a national dissertation award from UCOWR, and several teaching or mentoring accolades.