Development of three-dimensional graphene/metal oxide composite membrane for water purification

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While Canada has significant fresh water reserves (9% of the world's renewable freshwater), the fresh water isnot always available where needed. There exists a huge need for reliable, affordable, and efficient waterpurification devices to provide fresh water for everyday consumption, especially in remote areas. Desalinationis one of the most promising approaches to supply fresh water to deal with the rapidly growing global potablewater demand. Therefore, the industry supporter (New Plateau Technologies) aims at developing low-cost,practical portable handheld water desalination devices. To do so, high-performance and inexpensive membraneto filter salt needs to be developed first. However, the industry supporter does not have the technical orconceptual experience to undertake this task.Thus, the main goal of this six-month Engage project is to capitalize on the existing expertise of Dr. Sun's teamto synthesize three-dimensional (3D) graphene/metal oxide composite filtering membrane, to support NewPlateau Technologies into the fabrication of an efficient handheld water desalinator. Specifically, it includes thesynthesis of 3D graphene-based membrane and its pore size modification, the fabrication of 3D graphene/metaloxide nanocomposite and optimization, and the test for the water filtration performance.