Manganese Oxide Nanowire Membranes for Water Desalination

本研究通过促进具有成本效益、竞争力和可持续的海水淡化和水处理技术的发展，解决了全球水可持续性的重大挑战。该项目的目标是利用伪电容材料来提高离子吸附效率和新的纳米制造方法来制造下一代过滤膜。隧道膜是基于氧化锰纳米线，而不是以前使用的微米级颗粒。对这些纳米孔膜的电容去离子性能进行了评估。这些知识将使尺寸和电荷选择膜的制造成为可能。该方法简单，成本效益高，可扩展，适用于工业规模制造。这项研究将对水净化和清洁水技术产生重大影响。在这项工作中开发的膜也可以在液体和气体的其他分离/过滤过程中找到应用。这项研究涉及纳米制造、材料科学和电化学等多个科学和工程学科。研究结果将纳入课程材料，并将通过介绍和示范向更大的社区传播。来自不同背景的优秀学生，特别是代表性不足的少数民族学生将参与研究和教育。该项目的目标是制造先进的海水淡化膜，使水能够快速渗透，同时保持良好的机械完整性，并通过可调节大小的微孔选择性吸收离子，这种膜可以由具有隧道晶体结构的氧化锰纳米线制成。该研究将利用对一维微孔结构隧道规模的前所未有的控制，为具有多种结构化学的复杂锰氧化物的电吸附行为的设计和控制提供见解。一维纳米级的形貌将使其与盐溶液的接触面积大，并将适用于制造机械坚固的膜，这些膜具有可控制的孔隙率，与高水通量兼容。该项目将对海水淡化过程中假电容性氧化锰的结构-性能关系进行系统研究。目的是证明隧道氧化锰基膜的特殊机械和化学稳定性。

This research addresses the global grand challenge of water sustainability by contributing to the development of cost-effective, competitive and sustainable desalination and water treatment technologies. The project goal is to use pseudocapacitative materials to increase ion adsorption efficiency and novel nanomanufacturing approaches to fabricate the next-generation filtration membranes. The tunnel membranes are based on manganese oxide nanowires instead of micron-scale particles used previously. The performance of these nanoporous membranes is assessed for capacitative deionization. This knowledge will permit the manufacture of size- and charge-selective membranes. The methodology is easy, cost effective and scalable, making it suitable for industrial scale manufacturing. The research will have a strong impact on water purification and clean water technologies. The membranes, developed in this work, can also find applications in other separation/filtration processes in liquids and gases. This research involves several disciplines in science and engineering including nanomanufacturing, materials science and electrochemistry. The results will be integrated into a course material and will be disseminated to the larger community via presentations and demonstrations. Outstanding students of diverse backgrounds, especially under-represented minorities will be engaged in the research and education.The project's objective is that advanced water desalination membranes, enabling fast water permeation while maintaining good mechanical integrity and selective ions sorption through micropores with tunable size, can be manufactured from manganese oxide nanowires with tunnel crystal structures. The research will take advantage of unprecedented control over the scale of one-dimensional microporous structural tunnels to provide insights into the design and control of the electrosorption behavior of complex manganese oxides with versatile structural chemistry. One-dimensional nanoscale morphology will enable high contact area with the salt solution and it will be suitable for manufacturing mechanically robust membranes with controlled porosity compatible with high water flux. The project will conduct a systematic investigation of structure-property relations for pseudocapacitive manganese oxides in water desalination processes. The goal is to demonstrate exceptional mechanical and chemical stability of the tunnel manganese oxide-based membranes.