Presentazioni e Articoli Tecnici

Electrodialysis (ED) is a unit operation for the separation of electrolytes with numerous applications in the chemical, food and biotechnological fields. Its modeling requires estimating several parameters and performing many batch desalination experiments (Fidaleo and Moresi, 2005). However, several scientific papers have shown how parametric estimation can be simplified by focusing on the most important engineering parameters (Fidaleo and Moresi, 2011) or by using a model-based optimization approach (Galvanin et al., 2015). Recently, it has been shown how the simultaneous measurement of solute and water transport in a miniaturized ED system together with the use of ordinary differential equations for modeling the system allow the estimation of model parameters from experimental data obtained from a single experiment (Varain et al., 2023). In this paper, we follow a similar approach for the characterization of an ED pilot plant. We show how by using a time-varying electric current as the feed to the membrane stack and appropriately choosing the other experimental conditions, it is possible through simultaneous measurement of water and electrolyte fluxes to estimate the parameters necessary for ED modeling from single desalination trials. Both the model and the parameter estimation procedure were carried out with Comsol Multiphysics.