Varada Menon Palakkal Published in Nature's npj Clean Water
Congrats to Varada Menon from the Arges Lab for her recent publication in Nature's npj Clean Water (). This report highlights a 25% improvement in desalination rate while also achieving about 10% reduction in energy use with new resin wafer materials. The work was part of a collaboration with the Applied Materials Division of Argonne National Laboratory. The new resin wafer materials were realized using an innovative manufacturing process that allowed the substitution of a polyethylene adhesive with an ionomer adhesive. These adhesives immobilize ion-exchange resin particles into porous beds. As a result, the ionomer binder resin wafers showed a 3x increase in ionic conductivity without sacrificing porosity.