Highly Durable and Efficient Pore Filling Type Ion Exchange Membranes for Reverse Electrodialysis

Highly durable ion exchange pore filling membranes (cation exchange membranes and anion exchange membranes) with high ion transfer coefficients have been developed for reverse electrodialysis as an energy conversion system. The polymer electrolytes in both cases of cation exchangeable and anion exchangeable ones consisting of the whole hydrocarbon materials were introduced into porous hydrocarbon substrates and crosslinked by radical polymerization in this work. The thickness of the prepared pore filling membranes was controlled between 20 and 25 micrometers to extremely lower membrane resistance and to increase ion transfer. The prepared ion exchange pore filling membranes were characterized by using dimensional stability, membrane area resistance, ion transport number, and phisico-chemical stability. Also the thermal and the structural properties of the prepared membranes were determined. Meanwhile, all the properties of the prepared membranes were compared with commercial membranes obtained from Tokuyama, Fuji, and Fuma-Tech. Furthermore, RED cell performance and energy efficiency using the prepared pore filling membranes were also evaluated. Finallly we obtained a world best cell power density when comparing to the result reported in elsewhere.