Nanostructured Membranes

基于膜的分离过程通常比竞争技术需要更少的能量，但往往受到低流速和低选择性的限制。先进的纳米材料为膜设计开辟了新的可能性，通过增强透水性和选择性，可以彻底改变膜技术。预计纳米结构膜的性能将提高几个数量级，这将提高加拿大和国外清洁水和能源分离系统的效率，包括天然气净化、石化分离、碳捕获和海水淡化。纳米结构的膜设计包括由碳纳米管或原子薄材料（如石墨烯）制成的膜。它们的结构包含原子尺度的流动通道，可以根据大小或亲和力拒绝分子，同时提供所选物种的快速流动。然而，在实际规模上实现高性能纳米结构膜仍然存在重大挑战。本研究项目将专注于发展纳米结构膜技术和了解流体通过亚纳米结构的流动。我们将开发原子薄膜，针对其可扩展性的两个主要障碍：通过材料缺陷泄漏和孔径不均匀性。石墨烯以外的二维材料，包括那些具有固有纳米孔隙的材料，将在膜系统中探索其优势。我们将开拓新的碳纳米管膜设计，如石墨烯-碳纳米管复合膜和具有高多孔壁的碳纳米管膜。我们将通过实验研究气体、液体和离子在纳米结构膜中单个亚纳米孔中的流动，以更好地了解最小长度尺度下的质量传递。这一研究项目将导致纳米流体学的基础发现，以及纳米结构膜技术性能和可扩展性的改进。这项技术所带来的显著性能提升将降低与加拿大相关的一些工业分离过程的能源成本。它将扩大膜在天然气净化和石油和天然气工业的石化分离中的应用。极高的渗透性可能使近大气压分离或富氧发电实现经济的碳捕获。水处理和海水淡化过程的成本也将降低。在基础方面，我们将开发新的工具，在比现有仪器的检测极限更小的尺度上测量流体流动，并且随着边界的原子尺度细节变得重要，可能会发现新的流体流动现象。这项研究计划将推动纳米结构膜技术领域的发展，影响各种化学和机械工程分离过程。

Membrane based separation processes typically require less energy than competing technologies but are often limited by low flow rates and low selectivities. Advanced nanomaterials open new possibilities for membrane designs that could revolutionize membrane technology through enhanced permeance and selectivity. The orders of magnitude higher performance predicted for nanostructured membranes would improve the efficiency of separation systems for clean water and energy in Canada and abroad, including those for natural gas purification, petrochemical separations, carbon capture, and desalination. Nanostructured membrane designs include those made from carbon nanotubes or atomically thin materials, such as graphene. Their structures contain atomic-scale flow passages that can reject molecules based on size or affinity while providing fast flow of the selected species. However, significant challenges remain to realize high performance nanostructured membranes on a practical scale. This research program will focus on developing nanostructured membrane technology and understanding fluid flow through their sub-nanometer structures. We will develop atomically-thin membranes by targeting the two major obstacles to their scalability: leakage through material defects and pore size non-uniformity. Two-dimensional materials beyond graphene, including those with inherent nanoporosity, will be explored for advantages in membrane systems. We will pioneer new carbon nanotube membrane designs, such as composite graphene-carbon nanotube membranes and membranes from carbon nanotubes with highly porous walls. We will experimentally study gas, liquid, and ion flow through single sub-nanometer pores in nanostructured membranes to better understand mass transport at the smallest length scale. This research program will lead to discoveries in fundamental nanofluidics and improvements in the performance and scalability of nanostructured membrane technology. The significant performance gains promised by this technology would reduce the energy costs of a number of industrial separation processes relevant to Canada. It would expand the use of membranes in natural gas purification and petrochemical separation in the oil and gas industry. The extremely high permeance possible would enable economical carbon capture by near atmospheric pressure separation or oxygen enrichment for reduced emission power generation. The cost of water treatment and desalination processes will also be reduced. On the fundamental side, we will develop new tools to measure fluid flows on scales smaller than the detection limits of current instruments and may discover new fluid flow phenomena as the atomic-scale details of boundaries become important. This research program will advance the field of nanostructured membrane technology, impacting a variety of chemical and mechanical engineering separation processes.