Toward a better artificial kidney with electrodialysis

Medical patients who suffer from kidney failure must undergo a painful and difficult dialysis procedure. Modern dialysis machines are large and expensive, requiring patients to visit a central facility every few days. Rapid filtration of the blood results in high flow rates, which damage blood vessels over time, and recovery times after the procedure are long.

Mohammad Moulod and Saeed Moghaddam incorporated ion exchange membranes into a miniaturized electrodialysis cell for ion recovery as part of their efforts to create a continuous dialysis device. Their work demonstrates the validity of a key part of this multi-step artificial kidney platform.

“This study serves as a proof of concept and represents the first step toward a more advanced multi-ion electrodialysis system where the critical challenges, such as pH regulation, gas bubble formation, and related electrochemical effects, can be effectively controlled,” said Moulod.

Previous efforts have explored electrodialysis for ion separation in blood, but the process risks damage to blood cells. Moulod and Moghaddam avoided this problem by first filtering out the blood cells and performing electrodialysis only on the filtered plasma.

Their resulting electrodialysis cell, measuring 4 x 4 cm, recovered 40% of sodium chloride ions with a flow rate of 30 milliliters/hour. The modular design means the cell could be stacked, in series or in parallel, for improved results.

The duo plans to demonstrate this stacked configuration and continue refining their electrodialysis cell to handle a broader range of impurities.

“We plan to extend the system to multiple ionic species and develop a scalable stacked design integrated with filtration and water recovery toward a compact artificial kidney platform,” said Moulod.

Source: “Modeling and experimental study of low flow rate miniaturized electrodialysis for artificial kidney applications,” by Mohammad Moulod and Saeed Moghaddam, Journal of Applied Physics (2026). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0326844 .