Development of a compact redox flow cell for early-stage desalination assessment
Anas O. MUSTAFA, Mahmoud IBNOUF, Mohamed A. ALNAIRABIAH, Hadil ABUKHALIFEH, Ioannis ZUBURTIKUDIS, Mohammed ALKHADEDHER
Abstract. The presented work describes a compact redox flow desalination (RFD) prototype designed for fresh-water production from a saline water feed. The designed RFD system consists of carbon felt electrodes, thin titanium current collectors, acrylic housing, a cation exchange membrane (CEM), an anion exchange membrane (AEM), and ferri/ferrocyanide as a redox couple in a potassium chloride supporting electrolyte. Although the setup achieves successful stable open circuit potential (OCP), it struggled to translate electrochemical activity into effective salt removal during desalination trial runs. Therefore, the cell was deconstructed, and a compact version was built to identify and fix design problems. Upon successful completion of design validation testing, current efforts focus on identifying alternative redox couples that can deliver improved ion selectivity, reduced crossover, and enhanced operational stability for such a system. Also, the newly designed compact cell will be used to evaluate new chemistries prior to full scale desalination testing, thereby improving overall testing efficiency and reducing development time.
Keywords
Redox Flow, Desalination, Energy Storage, Electrochemical Characterization
Published online 6/20/2026, 6 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Anas O. MUSTAFA, Mahmoud IBNOUF, Mohamed A. ALNAIRABIAH, Hadil ABUKHALIFEH, Ioannis ZUBURTIKUDIS, Mohammed ALKHADEDHER, Development of a compact redox flow cell for early-stage desalination assessment, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 67, pp 691-696, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904176-95
The article was published as article 95 of the book Climate Action and Sustainability
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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