SBIR Phase II: High Permeability Thin-Film Nanocomposite Membranes for Reverse Osmosis Desalination

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）二期项目旨在进一步开发用于海水淡化的基于纳米材料、高渗透、节能的膜。膜基反渗透（RO）是世界上许多地方的主要海水淡化技术，尽管它只提供一小部分饮用水需求。这在很大程度上是由于这项技术的能源密集性。人们普遍认为，提高膜的渗透性可以使海水反渗透所需的能量显著降低30-50%。第一阶段开发的反渗透膜在渗透性方面比最先进的膜有了显著的提高，同时保持了较高的盐截留率。第二阶段的目标是扩大第一阶段开发的工艺，以生产行业标准形状因素的螺旋缠绕盒。然后，这些膜将在大型市政海水淡化厂进行测试，以确定它们未来的性能。该项目的更广泛的影响/商业影响是，该技术有望使反渗透海水淡化与现有的水生产方法更接近成本平价。此外，第一阶段取得的优异膜性能表明纳米材料在反渗透膜开发中的前景。将这一过程扩大到试点规模将有助于证明该技术的商业可行性。此外，该项目有望加强对纳米尺度上水和离子通过膜传输背后的科学的理解，这是当前学术界感兴趣的领域。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to further the development of nanomaterials-based, high permeability, energy-efficient membranes for desalination of water. Membrane-based reverse osmosis (RO) is the dominant desalination technology in many parts of the world, although it provides just a small fraction of potable water demand. This is in large part due to the energy intensiveness of the technology. It is widely acknowledged that improvements in membrane permeability can bring about significant reductions in the energy requirements for seawater RO of between 30-50%. The RO membranes developed under Phase I demonstrated significant improvements in permeability over state-of-the-art membranes, while maintaining a high salt rejection. Phase II aims to scale the process developed in Phase I to produce spiral wound cartridges of an industry standard form factor. The membranes then will be tested to determine their future performance in a large-scale municipal desalination plant.The broader impact/commercial impact of this project is that the technology is expected to bring RO desalination closer to cost-parity with existing methods of water production. Also, the superior membrane performance achieved in Phase I demonstrates the promise of nanomaterials in RO membrane development. Scaling this process up to the pilot scale will help demonstrate the commercial viability of the technology. In addition, this project is expected to enhance the understanding of the science behind water and ion transport through membranes on the nanometer-scale, an area of current academic interest.