Aquaporin based biomimetic membrane for water reuse and desalination

Abstract

Water resources have become a scarcity in the world. As a result of that, reverse osmosis (RO) membrane based desalination has experienced a remarkable growth. However, current existing RO membranes are still less permeable.

After millions of years of evolution, aquaporins, the large family of water transport proteins in cell membranes, are nature’s own water channels with high water permeability and excellent salt rejection combined together. It is estimated that an aquaporin-based biomimetic membrane (ABM) can potentially achieve a water permeability two orders of magnitude higher compared to existing commercial RO membranes. So far, several conceptual designs for producing the AqpZ based biomimetic membrane have been proposed. Nevertheless, in terms of producing the large area defects-free biomimetic membrane, the successes of those concepts have not been reported yet.

The target of this study is, mainly, the synthesizing of the first generation ABM. Three parts of work are presented in three chapters. First of all, the effects of proteoliposomes compositions on separation properties of proteoliposomes are systematically studied. Secondly, the first generation ABM, with a defect-free and large membrane area, is successfully prepared by a combined proteoliposome and interfacial polymerization method. Last, and not least, a further systematic study of these ABM was carried out, with ABM performance suitable for both forward osmosis (FO) and High-pressure RO.