Interfacial Polymerization of Nanofilms for Aqueous Membrane Separations

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Population growth, climate change, and increasing standards of living are stressing our supplies of important resources such as water and metals. Sustainable management of these resources will be a crucial challenge in the coming century. The long-term objective of my research program is to develop high-performance membrane materials and processes that enable efficient separation and recovery of critical resources. Work in my group will directly impact water-treatment processes (drinking water, wastewater, and desalination) and allow for improved water management and resource recovery in important Canadian industrial sectors such as mining & metals, pulp & paper, and oil & gas.  Over the next five years, my group will focus on the synthesis and transport properties of composite polymeric membranes formed by interfacial polymerization (IP). In this process, water-soluble and oil-soluble monomers react at the oil/water interface, producing a thin and crosslinked polymer network. Our work will have two broad goals related to IP: (1) better understand the fundamental permeability behavior of water, ions, and other species in polyamide membranes formed by IP that are used globally in reverse-osmosis desalination; and (2) expand the use of IP to create robust, high-performance porous membranes for ultrafiltration. This work is original and innovative as it will increase fundamental knowledge of important materials and will create new innovations that will enable improved water-treatment processes. The research will be accomplished by 2 PhD students, 1 MASc student, and 5 undergraduate students. This work has high training value as it is innovative and fundamental, involves state-of-the-art characterization techniques, and requires multi-disciplinary collaboration. The 2 PhD students will develop expertise in diffusion in polymers and membrane fabrication, respectively. The MASc student will work with the PhD students to synthesize and characterize polyamide nanofilms. In all of this work, materials will be synthesized, experimentally assessed for their chemical and physical structure, and analyzed in membrane filtration, with measured permeabilities modeled using fundamental transport models. The proposed research program will lead to practical innovations that benefit Canadian industries, environmental health, and public health. In particular, fundamental knowledge and new membrane designs established in our work will result in improved membranes for water purification, helping to ensure both the protection of our environment and the uninterrupted supply of clean drinking water to Canadians and people around the world.