Chemical-Free Seawater Desalination Technology Makes Clean Drinking Water

A groundbreaking breakthrough in water purification could revolutionize desalination as we know it—replacing costly chemicals with cutting-edge carbon cloth electrodes to extract boron from seawater. This critical advancement brings us one step closer to transforming ocean water into safe, drinkable water on a massive scale. Unveiled in a newly published Nature Water study, engineers from the University of Michigan and Rice University have paved the way for a cleaner, more sustainable future—where access to fresh water is no longer a luxury, but a global reality.

Boron is a natural component of seawater that becomes a toxic contaminant in drinking water when it sneaks through conventional filters for removing salts. Seawater’s boron levels are around twice as high as the World Health Organization’s most lenient limits for safe drinking water, and five to 12 times higher than the tolerance of many agricultural plants.

“Most reverse osmosis membranes don’t remove very much boron, so desalination plants typically have to do some post treatment to get rid of the boron, which can be expensive,” said Jovan Kamcev, U-M assistant professor of chemical engineering and macromolecular science and engineering and a co-corresponding author of the study. “We developed a new technology that’s fairly scalable and can remove boron in an energy-efficient way compared to some of the conventional technologies.”

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Boron, present in seawater as uncharged boric acid, easily permeates reverse osmosis membranes, which are designed to remove charged ions like salt. This necessitates additional, costly treatment steps in desalination plants. Typically, a base is added to the water, converting the boric acid into a negatively charged ion, which can then be removed by a second reverse osmosis stage. Finally, acid is added to neutralize the base.

“Our device reduces the chemical and energy demands of seawater desalination, significantly enhancing environmental sustainability and cutting costs by up to 15 percent, or around 20 cents per cubic meter of treated water,” said Weiyi Pan, a postdoctoral researcher at Rice University and a study co-first author.

Given that global desalination capacity totaled 95 million cubic meters per day in 2019, the new membranes could save around $6.9 billion annually. Large desalination plants—such as San Diego’s Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant—could save millions of dollars in a year.