A team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have suggested that renewable solar energy could play a crucial role in purifying water.

Currently, water purification processes rely on electrochemical separation processes that are able to separate different particles within a solution. Although energy-efficient, this technique relies on energy derived from nonrenewable sources, such as fossil fuels.

Instead, the research team has made a breakthrough by integrating solar energy into the electrochemical separation process using a semiconductor, demonstrating that water remediation can be powered in part – and perhaps exclusively – by renewable energy sources.

In this method, the chemists used a semiconductor to integrate solar energy into an electrochemical separation process powered by a redox reaction, which manipulates ions’ electric charge to separate them from a solution like water. 

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