Objectives

BioDES aims to develop an innovative and low-energy technology for drinking water production, using Microbial Desalination Cell technology either as stand-alone or as pre-treatment step for RO, and develop a sustainable desalination process for fresh water production.

General activities

The project has been focused on overcoming the current limitations of MDC technology at lab scale, such as low desalination rate, high manufacturing cost, biofouling and scaling problems on membranes, and optimizing the microbial-electrochemical process.

Expected results

Among the obtained results, it is important to note the 85% reduction in energy cost compared with current desalination, 75% reduction of the cost of desalinated water, and the 20-fold increase of fresh water production compared to state-of-the-art MDC systems. The experimental results will allow the scale-up of the technology and further validation in real environments.

Grant CTM2015-74695-JIN funded by: