A new project kicked off this July as researchers across four institutions joined forces with local start-up companies, consultants, and coastal utilities to explore how a process that occurs naturally every minute along North Carolina’s coast may be harnessed for sustainable energy.

The process in question is the mixing of salt and fresh water in North Carolina’s sounds and estuaries. In order to develop technology and assess the feasibility of implementing such technology along North Carolina’s coast, researchers from North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Coastal Studies Institute, and East Carolina University are collaborating on a three-year project funded by the UNC Research Opportunities Initiative (ROI).

Co-principal investigator Orlando Coronell, PhD, Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the Gillings School of Public Health at UNC, describes the premise in terms of the more familiar process of desalinization. During electrodialysis Continue reading →