Thermoelectric Membrane Distillation

Our research focuses on cutting the energy consumption in membrane distillation (MD) – a desalination technique – at competitive levels by using thermoelectric materials.

Incorporating thermoelectric materials and devices into MD modules can greatly simplify the MD process whilst achieving better efficiency through elimination of external thermal sources and consequent reduction of heat exchanger losses to near zero.

The lack of literature about this thermoelectric MD concept makes it difficult to understand, optimize and make reliable predictions about the system.

We are currently combining high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics with mathematical modeling and experimentation to investigate and report key data for the development of thermoelectric MD system.