HIT's innovations enable sustainable desalination

Efficient and sustainable desalination using solar energy directly from Hitomitsu

Harbin, February 10 (Reporter Shi Yifu) Harbin Institute of Technology released the news on the 10th, the university's environmental school of academician Ma Jun team and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Professor Lai Zhiping team joint research, in the field of membrane water treatment technology research has made a major breakthrough, the work design synthesis of ultra-high flux porous graphene film and the use of low-quality heat source to achieve efficient and sustainable seawater desalination.

The world's growing water scarcity and the high carbon footprint of current desalination technologies are driving the need to find a sustainable solution with low energy consumption.

Membrane distillation (MD) uses heat to drive water vapor through the membrane 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, but the low throughput of MD membrane is the main bottleneck limiting the widespread application of this technology.

Nanoporous graphene membrane preparation and characterization provided by Hitachi University

In view of this, the team of academicians of HIT Ma Jun 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-throughput nanoporous graphene membranes, which does not require secondary punching and transfer processes.

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.

The result, Ultrahigh-flux Nanoporous Graphene Membrane for SustainableSeawater Desalination Using Low-grade Heat, was published in the top international journal Advanced Materials. (End)