Manganese Oxide Nanowire Membranes for Water Desalination

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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.