Membrane distillation for sustainable desalination and water treatment

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The world, including the UK, is currently facing the need for producing fresh water from sources other than rivers, ponds or lakes. It is of paramount importance for countries where freshwater resources are limited, but also for regions that can suffer from unexpected draughts. Demand for fresh water for human use and industrial activities worldwide are 10 and 20%, respectively (agriculture accounts for the remaining 70%). However, in industrialised nations, industries consume more than half of the water available for domestic use. Policies regulating the quality of water that can be discharged back into rivers or other water-bodies is becoming stricter worldwide, and therefore is crucial to advance on the use of technologies that can generate the water with the required quality but lower foot print and more economically than the conventional technologies currently used. Thus, the aim of this project is to advance on the use of a sustainable technology for water purification (membrane distillation, MD) by developing highly permeable graphene-based membranes with long term stability (i.e. anti-wetting properties). MD is considered to be sustainable as the low-grade thermal energy required to do the separation can be obtained by means of thermal solar collectors or waste heat from power plants and other industrial operations. In addition, it allows to treat highly saline brines with 100% rejection of impurities in a single stage process, with no need for costly pressurised membrane systems, as it is operated under atmospheric pressure. Furthermore, the developed MD membranes can propel the separation efficiency and recovery of valuable products from desalination brines and wastewater effluents in a range of industrial processes including the textile industry.