STTR Phase I: Extremely fouling-resistant nanofiltration membranes treating organic-rich wastewater

这项小型企业技术转让（STTR）项目的广泛影响/商业潜力将是一种低成本、高性能的纳滤膜技术，用于从高污染废水中去除油、污染物和有机物质。美国的工业活动每天产生超过250亿加仑的废水，其中大部分被油、油脂、溶剂和其他有害化合物污染。现有的过滤膜很容易被这些油性物质堵塞和损坏，性能迅速下降。用传统方法安全地处理这些废水每年要花费美国工业设施400多亿美元。纳滤技术的突破将使全国各地的工业——如食品加工商、垃圾填埋场、发电厂和造纸厂——能够轻松、经济地清洁废水。这个STTR第一期项目建议发展技术和工艺，生产商业规模的抗污染纳滤膜，用于处理高度污染的工业废水。该项目将结合高精度喷涂等大规模制造技术和基于两性离子共聚物的新型化学平台，生产高性能、低成本的膜。这些聚合物在纳米尺度上表现出非凡的抗有机污染能力和孔自组装能力。为了达到所需的性能，该项目将开发工艺和材料，使薄膜复合材料的选择层厚度小于1微米。目前，这种厚度的层只能通过尼龙基聚合物的原位聚合来实现，这种聚合物成本高，渗透性低，并且不耐氧化条件。该项目将通过利用两性离子共聚物独特的自组装行为来克服这些限制，从而在平板和中空纤维形式中实现超薄、均匀的多孔膜。该项目将进一步通过与工业条件相关的加速生命周期测试来证明这些膜的化学稳健性。自组装聚合物膜的商业规模生产将代表这类材料的重大突破。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) project will be a low-cost, high-performance nanofiltration membrane technology for removing oils, pollutants, and organic materials from highly contaminated wastewater. Industrial activity in the U.S. produces more than 25 billion gallons of wastewater every day, much of contaminated with oils, greases, solvents, and other harmful chemical compounds. Existing filtration membranes are easily clogged and damaged by these oily materials, suffering a rapid decline in performance. Safely processing this wastewater by conventional means costs U.S. industrial facilities more than $40B per year. A breakthrough in nanofiltration technology will allow industries across the country - such as food processors, landfills, power plants, and paper mills - to easily and affordably clean their wastewater. This STTR Phase I project proposes to develop the technology and processes to produce commercial-scale anti-fouling nanofiltration membranes for use with highly contaminated industrial wastewater. The project will combine large-scale manufacturing techniques such as high-precision spray coating with a novel chemistry platform based on zwitterionic copolymers to produce high-performance, low-cost membranes. These polymers exhibit extraordinary resistance to organic fouling as well as pore self-assembly at the nanometer scale. To achieve the required performance, the project will develop the process and materials to achieve a thickness of less than one micron in the selective layer of a thin-film composite. Currently, layers of this thickness are only achievable using in-situ polymerization of nylon-based polymers, which are costly, have low permeability, and are intolerant of oxidizing conditions. This project will overcome these limitations by exploiting the unique self-assembly behavior of zwitterionic copolymers to achieve ultrathin, uniformly porous films in both flat sheet and hollow fiber forms. The project will furthermore demonstrate the chemical robustness of these membranes with accelerated lifecycle testing relevant to industrial conditions. Commercial-scale production of self-assembling polymer membranes will represent a significant breakthrough for materials in this class.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.