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Microbial Desalination Cells: A Boon for Future Generations

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Book cover Microbial Fuel Cell Technology for Bioelectricity

Abstract

Microbial desalination cell is one of the emerging technologies in the field of microbial fuel cell. The need for a good source of water in this world has turned up many researchers to treasure this innovative approach of treating marine or seawater. Though there are some conventional technologies involving physical and chemical means of separating salts from marine water, they have a drawback of using energy to drive the process. This energy consumption can be overcome by exploiting microorganisms in microbial fuel cell where these microbes play a major role of desalting the water with the synchronized power production. With the help of salt-tolerant microbes and an ideal ion-exchange membrane desalination process can be accomplished. This way of treating seawater will however be a boon to the future generation for the water availability. Though this technology has its own limitations, it is in the hands of researchers to make this as a sole source of water conversion for the upcoming generation.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge Dr. E.M. Shankar, Head of the Department, Department of Life Sciences, for encouraging me in writing this chapter. I would also like to render my sincere thanks to Dr. Sivasankar Venkataraman who has been a constant support.

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Jothinathan, D. (2018). Microbial Desalination Cells: A Boon for Future Generations. In: Sivasankar, V., Mylsamy, P., Omine, K. (eds) Microbial Fuel Cell Technology for Bioelectricity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92904-0_12

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