Graphene/Inorganic Hollow Fibre Membranes for Water Treatment

膜过滤技术是一种标准的分离工艺，在水处理中得到了广泛的应用，但其性能仍然受到膜厚度的严重限制。该项目将尖端的膜制造技术与原子层材料石墨烯的科学相结合，实现了用于海水淡化和废水处理的高性能石墨烯中空纤维膜。我们将开发以金属中空纤维为衬底的石墨烯薄膜，其中石墨烯薄膜的厚度将小于5 nm，孔径控制在0.3到20 nm之间。石墨烯中空纤维膜的渗透通量将比其他相同孔径的膜高至少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组件，并建立实验室规模的演示装置，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组件的方法和知识，使石墨烯进入实际工程应用。

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.