Electronics for flow through electrode capacitive desalination

Abstract

This thesis presents the design, construction, and testing of the power electronics, control circuit, and embedded system to facilitate a water desalination system that uses flow through electrode capacitive desalination technology. The focus is on designing, building, and testing the circuit that controls charging the electrodes that desalinate water and the circuit that recovers and stores the capacitive energy of the electrodes in order to improve the energy efficiency of the system. Multiple designs were considered in order to reduce cost, improve the feasibility of implementation, and improve energy efficiency of the system. The prototype electronic system was built and tested in a lab on a small scale setup with capacitive desalination cells. The feasibility of scaling up this system to a large scale desalination system was taken into consideration and is part of the goal of this project.