Water Purification from Heavy Metals Due to Electric Field Ion Drift

Abstract

A water purification method using a static electric field that may drift the dissolved ions of heavy metals is proposed here. The electric field force drifts the positively charged metal ions of continuously flowing contaminated water to one sidewall, where the negative electrode is placed, leaving most of the area of the duct purified. The steady-state ion distributions, as well as the time evolution in the linear regime, are studied analytically and ion concentration distributions for various electric field magnitudes and widths of the duct are reported. The method performs well with a duct width less than 10−3 m and an electrode potential of 0.26 V or more. Moreover, a significant reduction of more than 90% in heavy metals concentration is accomplished in less than a second at a low cost.