Adam Cotton1, Kyu Taek Cho1, Xiao Su2, Dzeneta Dujkovic3, and Tomoyuki Shibata3
1)Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northern Illinois University; 2) Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; 3) Public Health Program, Northern Illinois University
Centralized public water systems (PWS) widely applied in Illinois has suffered from large energy consumptions, expensive operation costs, and excess uses of chemicals in treating the drinking water. In order to address those issues, a research team is formed with researchers from Northern Illinois University (NIU) and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with an aim to develop a novel system for sustaining safe drinking water supply in Illinois.
NIU has developed the electro-coagulation (EC) to treat wastewater, while UIUC has investigated the electro-sorption (ES) for the treatment of drinking water. By synergistically integrating two systems into one, a novel wastewater treatment technology will be developed to treat wastewater containing a wide range of pollutant concentrations and chemical species that are occurring across the Illinois basin. In the presentation, progress of research will be addressed with preliminary test results and cell structure/design, and research plan/direction in the future will be discussed.