Membrane for the Future

Yuan, L. et. al. 2014.http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es405795s

Clean water is important to the development of a socio-economic environment. The development of new approaches to obtain high quality fresh water resources is vital. Membrane distillation is a practical application for water purification but, is hindered because a desirable membrane to fulfill special requirements doesn’t exist. Nanyang Technological University in Singapore was inspired by the superhydrophobic lotus leaf plant to fabricate a composite nanofiber membrane for direct contact membrane distillation. These new hydrophobic membranes have a greater effective liquid evaporation, are built stronger, have self-cleaning, properties, and enhance permeation flux in membrane distillation. Unfortunately, the nanofibers in the membrane still have unstable performance. 


Yuan,L., R. Wang, and A.G. Fane. 2014. Fabrication of bioinspired composite nanofiber membranes with robust superhydrophobicity for direct contact membrane distillation (Singapore). Environ. Sci. Technol. 48:6335-6341.