Sungkyunkwan University (President Ji Beom Yoo) announced that a research team led by Professor Ho Seok Park in the School of Chemical Engineering, in collaboration with Samsung Research at Samsung Electronics, has developed a novel Water-Energy Nexus* technology that can efficiently treat saline water and wastewater generated from high-value-added industrial processes—such as semiconductor, secondary battery, and display manufacturing—while enabling their use for energy storage and resource recovery.

*Water-Energy Nexus: Water is essential for energy production, and energy is required for water management. This concept focuses on optimizing the interdependence between these two resources to address water scarcity and climate change and to enable sustainable resource management.

Conventional wastewater treatment technologies typically rely on physical adsorption and desorption of ions on electrode surfaces, resulting in high energy consumption and low ion selectivity. In this study, the researchers utilized the distinctive ion-storage mechanism of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)*—which were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry—to develop an energy-efficient electrochemical device that can selectively remove or store cations and anions simultaneously without an ion-exchange membrane.

*Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs): Porous crystalline materials composed of metal ions or clusters connected by organic linkers. MOFs offer a large internal surface area and high structural stability, enabling their use in diverse applications such as gas storage, catalysis, and sensing.

MOFs are three-dimensional porous materials constructed from metal ions and organic ligands, and they are used in a wide range of fields, including gas storage, catalysis, and sensing. By taking advantage of these structural characteristics, Professor Park’s team developed an electrode technology that can selectively and simultaneously remove and store divalent cations such as Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺, as well as anions such as Br⁻, I⁻, and Cl⁻, while operating stably with low energy consumption of about 76 Wh kg⁻¹.

Professor Park said, “This study goes beyond simply purifying saline water and wastewater, as it simultaneously demonstrates their potential to be converted into renewable energy and valuable resources,” adding, “We expect this technology to find broader applications in various fields, including secondary batteries, desalination, and resource recovery.”

This research was supported by the Global Leader Research and the Future Promising Fusion Technology Pioneer programs of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the Korean Government (MSIT), and was carried out in collaboration with Samsung Research at Samsung Electronics. The results were published on October 28, 2025 in Joule (impact factor 35.4; top 1.4%), a leading international journal in energy research.

※ Paper Title: Divalent and Halide Dual Ion Storage of A Redox-Active Symmetric Cell for Efficient Wastewater-Energy Nexus

※ Journal: Joule

※ Authors: Corresponding author – Professor Ho Seok Park (Sungkyunkwan University); First authors – Dr. Gun Jang and PhD candidate Sang Baek Kim (Sungkyunkwan University)

※ Paper Link: https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(25)00357-5?rss=yes

※ (Pure): https://pure.skku.edu/en/persons/hoseok-park/

▲Conceptual illustration of a novel Water-Energy Nexus technology based on an energy-efficient, highly selective ion-recovery and storage device using MOF-derived electrode materials

▲(From left) Professor Ho Seok Park, Dr. Gun Jang, and PhD candidate Sang Baek Kim (Sungkyunkwan University)