Graphene/Inorganic Hollow Fibre Membranes for Water Treatment

膜基过滤技术是标准的分离工艺，在水处理中得到广泛应用；然而，它们的性能仍然受到膜厚度的严重限制。本项目将膜制造前沿技术与原子层材料石墨烯科学相结合，实现用于海水淡化和废水处理的高性能石墨烯中空纤维膜。我们将开发由金属中空纤维衬底支撑的石墨烯膜，石墨烯膜层厚度将小于5纳米，孔径控制在0.3至20纳米之间。石墨烯中空纤维膜的渗透通量将比其他具有相同孔径的膜高出至少50倍。此外，在本项目中，我们将组装上述石墨烯中空纤维膜的膜模块，并建立一个实验室规模的演示工厂，以评估其在实际应用中的可行性。将首次开发一套制备石墨烯中空纤维膜和膜模块的方法和知识，使石墨烯在真正的工程应用中。

Membrane-based filtration technologies are standard separation processes and are widely used in water treatment; however their performance is still severely limited by the membrane thickness. This project combines the cutting-edge technologies of membrane fabrication and the science of atomic layer materials, graphene, to realize high-performance graphene hollow fibre membranes for desalination of seawater and wastewater treatment. We will develop graphene membranes supported by metal hollow fibre substrates where the thickness of the graphene membrane layer will be less than 5 nm with controlled pore size from 0.3 to 20 nm. The graphene hollow fibre membrane will overwhelm other membranes with the same pore size by at least fifty times higher permeation flux. Furthermore, in this project we will assemble membrane modules of above graphene hollow fibre membranes and build a lab-scale demo plant to evaluate its feasibility in real applications. A set of methodologies and knowledge of preparing graphene hollow fibre membranes and membrane modules will be developed for the first time, making graphene in a real engineering application.