Today, the reporter learned from Harbin Institute of Technology that the team of academician Ma Jun of the School of Environment of the university and the team of Professor Lai Zhiping of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) jointly tackled the key problems and made a major breakthrough in the field of membrane water treatment technology research, designed and synthesized an ultra-high-flux porous graphene film and used a low-quality heat source to achieve efficient and sustainable seawater desalination. This result has been published in the top international journal Advanced Materials.
Direct use of solar energy for efficient and sustainable desalination
The world's growing water scarcity and the high carbon footprint of current desalination technologies are prompting the search for a sustainable solution with low energy consumption. Membrane distillation (MD) uses heat to drive water vapor through membranes to obtain high-quality clean water, which is a seawater desalination technology with great application prospects and a key core technology in many zero-emission processes. However, the low water production per unit time of the existing MD membrane has become the main bottleneck restricting the wide application of this technology.
Preparation and characterization of nanoporous graphene membranes
In order to solve this problem, the team of academicians of HIT Malaysia and The team of Professor Lai Zhiping of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia proposed a new process for preparing ultra-high flux nanoporous graphene membranes, which does not require secondary punching and transfer processes, and the resulting graphene membrane provides an extremely short and fast transmission path for water vapor, which is an order of magnitude higher than the MD membrane flux reported so far, and the desalination rate is greater than 99.8%, showing great application potential and advantages in seawater desalination.
Associate Professor Lu Dongwei of Academician Ma Jun's team is the first/corresponding author of the paper, and the research work was completed under the joint guidance of Academician Ma Jun and Professor Lai Zhiping.
Source: Guangming Daily