Lab-to-Market Design of an Electrodialysis-Based Home-Scale Water Desalination System

Abstract

Water scarcity is increasingly becoming a problem in India, so much so that a recently proposed piece of legislation would mandate home-scale water desalination systems to have a 60% recovery ratio [1], significantly higher than existing systems. We developed an electrodialysis-based home-scale desalination system for obtaining drinking water that will meet and surpass this new proposed recovery ratio. This project builds heavily on previous and current work by the MIT Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Lab and was conducted with Eureka Forbes Limited (EFL), a major stakeholder in India’s home-scale desalination industry. Two critical design modules within the desalinator are explored — the system integration and fluid reversal mechanism and the electrodialysis stack end cap analysis. We developed a model framework that will output the validity of end cap designs based on established design requirements, designed fluid reversal mechanisms for distinct markets, and fabricated a prototype desalination cabinet that fits within the EFL’s design constraints. We also discuss the details of our collaboration with both academic and industrial partners, extract specific lessons learned about the lab-to-market design process, and discuss some of the specific challenges faced by a design group in our circumstances and the ways we resolved them.