Highly efficient integrated simulation of electro-membrane processes for desalination of seawater

Abstract

Sea water desalination is an important technology to provide fresh drinking water. However, traditional processes require large amounts of energy, and there is ongoing research for new strategies with less energy consumption. In the HISEEM project, we investigated the electrodialysis process in this context. For this process, sea water flows through a channel between ion exchange membranes, which are kept apart by structure, filling the complete channel. Ions are driven out of the channel and through the membranes by an external electric field. The large Hornet system in Stuttgart enabled us to perform detailed simulations of the overall setup, including the flow through a complex geometry, interactions with the membranes, driving forces by the electric field and interactions of the species in the solvent. To achieve this, we make use of the (multi-species) lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). Besides results from those simulations, we present performance and scalability of our implementation on the Cray XC40 system Hornet at the HLRS in Stuttgart.